Nothing Good Gets Away.

It's fun to suddenly be able to communicate with elders here in Honduras in Spanish as it was very challenging to do so in Mandarin in Chengdu. Most of my Chinese friends' or students' grandparents were born long before the Open Door Policy was initiated in 1978 and speak very little Mandarin. I can understand enough of the local dialect in Chengdu (haha aka language) to get by, but it's always a challenge with the elderly.

Here, though, my brain tricks me into thinking that I will not be able to understand elderly people, when, surprise, surprise, I actually can! It's a pleasant surprise.
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Here's a sunrise

And another one

And trying to be a decent uncle

And the dog named Tessi

And us

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"Once you find something good, Max, you have to take care of it. You have to let it grow." 

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I used to believe that Chengdu was a small world and I got stuck in it. I would reference the white wall of clouds that seems to follow one everywhere, even into the well-lit, innermost rooms of an apartment, overbearing clouds that encourage claustrophobia. I would reference cultural differences and challenges that can make someone feel isolated and alone. I would reference the time that I spent there, how I didn't leave and get away from Chengdu enough to have a good opinion of it, looking from the outside in. I would mention other factors like my job or some other burden that I perceived to have plagued me during those years during which I lived there.

Those factors may all have been valid. I am not disposing of those ideas. I am, however, finding that I think the small world was my own. I built it up around me, caulked up the holes, shut the windows, and locked the door. I'd come out when I pleased, and that wasn't often. This leads me to the idea that, maybe, any place can become a small world unless one continues to push it's boundaries.

I couldn't get my heart or my brain outside of the perceived "small world" in which I felt I existed. It may be true that some places in the world possess certain traits that make that location more conducive to making people think OUT, but I think the place (Chengdu, in my case) can't be blamed for my own decisions, and my own decisions had a significant role to play.

Solutions? I don't know. Get geographically outside of the place regularly. Alternatively, explore more deeply within the place. Newness can be found without and within. And for the heart? I don't know. Relationships. Community. Friends.
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I've recently been reflecting on the illusion of missing out on something big or important that's happening somewhere else. It doesn't matter where "somewhere else" is. For many, myself included, it was always New York City. Surely there was something that was happening there that I was missing out on. Something immense, something grand yet profound, some secret that only me and the unique friends I would make there would discover. 

New York City is an amazing place, no one argues with that. I spent time in New York City over the past couple of years, though. I walked home in the middle of the night. I worked, I had fun. I went to bars and walked the streets, I got rained on and snowed on and sunned on and yelled at by policemen and ate pizza and it was fun. 

What I found, though, is that it was an illusion. The first year that I lived in China, in 2008, an urgent and immediate desire to travel and live overseas was fulfilled for and in me. I felt better. No, it didn't exterminate the traveling bug and likely never will, but the immediate desire calmed down in a healthy way. 

I interpret that this is not the case with New York City. I expected something that did not exist. It was an illusion that I had created for myself. It's not New York City's fault. I possessed the belief that I was missing out on something happening somewhere in the world. In New York City. Recently, I did what I wanted to do there, I drove the streets and saw the things and experienced the things that I wanted to experience, but I did not feel that some need had been met in doing so. 

In other words, "wherever you go, there you are." What's happening is where you are. You might be staring at a screen as you read this (in fact I think you have to be, unless you print out my blog... weird), but you very likely aren't missing anything, because "where it's happening", or, sometimes, where it could be happening, is where you are. Exactly where you are. 

I can still imagine "it" happening in other large cities that I'd like to visit like London, but now I know. I know the reasons that big cities can make someone feel like that, like every other place in the world is a dump and "nothing ever happens here." I get that. But now I know. 

It also helps that New York City is huge and gross just like every other huge and gross city in the world. Sometimes I like huge and gross cities but for the time being... 

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Everyone loves a disco siren.

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I enjoyed this.

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I've been listening to Two Door Cinema Club.