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8 Jul 2025

From ‘Merikkkah to Sabai Sabai: One Year Later…

by Maurice | posted in: Compassion, Family, Retirement, Speaking Your Truth, The Human Condition, Truth, Vulnerability | 0

The Year That Was… (Context & Milestones)

It’s been a year… and what a year it was.

I left behind a 25-year teaching career in government education, retired with full benefits. Goal accomplished, just like I planned since I was a little kid. The rat-race finished.

I let go of my real estate business, liquidated nearly everything I owned. Nothing in storage. No safety net. No plan B. Just what fit into a couple of suitcases… my heart and soul … and the life I hoped to carry forward.

A year since my father died. The kind of loss that wasn’t only filled with family drama but also rearranged my inner world into unexpected corners of my daily life. Carrying a quiet and persistent voice that shows itself at unexpected times.

A year since I landed in Thailand— trading the treadmill of American striving for the narrow and winding sois of Thailand. Not as a tourist this time, but as someone beginning again. A whole new life, stitched together in a country I only passed through a few times before.

A year since I stepped off the fast track and asked myself. Now what?

Why Thailand? / The Sabai Sabai Ethos

I chose Thailand for a reason.

I come from ‘merikkkah, where your worth is measured by how busy you are and how high you climb and how much stuff you gathered. Success is loud… Fast…Branded. The culture rewards the busyness of the grind. I played that game well. But somewhere deep down—even while I was winning—I always knew something wasn’t right about this ethos. I only knew I would eventually want out.

Thailand offering is something else. Here, there’s a phrase—sabai sabai. It’s hard to translate, carrys many interpretations. So click on the link. Basically, it carries the feeling of “it’s all good,” “no worries,” “take it easy.” A softening of the grip on life.

People let each other be. They don’t interfere, don’t shame, don’t push. There’s space to live how you want, without the constant pressure to explain or defend it.

That doesn’t mean it’s utopia. There are things I still struggle to make sense of—like the older foreign men with very young Thai wives. I try not to judge, but I notice. I wonder. I’ve heard whispers of customs and laws, especially in other countries, that make me uneasy. But I try to stay grounded in what I see, what I know.

The truth is, every culture has its shadows. There is darkness and corruption everywhere in this capitalist world. In Thailand, corruption is local and visible—you can slip a few baht to a police officer and avoid a ticket. In ‘merikkkah, it’s hidden in boardrooms, corporatism and political donations. Same game, different players.

Daily Life & Choices / A New Home

The rhythms of daily life here are slower, and are not free from their own complications.

Last October, Chiang Mai saw its worst flood in recorded history. The river spilled into places that were flood free forever, and I was displaced from my home. My landlord—dealing with worse damage at their own place—offered no help, despite what the lease spelled out.

That shook something in me. Not just the water damage, or the memory of wading through septic waters to get out of the floodwaters. But the reminder that even in a perceived peaceful place, things can fall apart. And do fall apart. I realized I needed to move—not just to avoid future flooding, but to find a setting that felt more stable, more aligned with the kind of life I came here to live.

I found a new home. It’s farther out from the city than I originally planned, and I’m still not sure how far is too far. Time will tell. But it offers the views of the mountains and the rice fields that I dreamed of. Quieter, more space, more tranquility, more possibility. More peace for my daily life… walking, cycling, swimming, writing, cooking and the occasional around the world travel.

I’m looking for peace. For simplicity in the slowness of life. For days that don’t feel like I need to accomplish the to-do lists, or a life I feel I need to survive or outrun.

And yet—simplicity isn’t always so simple. I still want my Bose speakers and Nike orthotic walking shoes. I want my Revo polarized sunglasses. I want rice fields, mango trees and fiber internet. I want clean water and the freshest produce. These aren’t luxuries to me—they’re the things that helps me live a good life.

I’m not trying to go off-grid. I’m just trying to get closer to what feels real to me.

Visa, Belonging, and the Bureaucracy of Aging Abroad

Thailand makes it surprisingly easy to stay—at least on paper. For those of us over 50, there’s a retirement visa option: keep a minimum balance in a Thai bank account, fill out the right forms, and you’re in.

But that’s just the surface.

Every ninety days, I must check in with immigration to confirm I haven’t disappeared. I do have a multiple entry visa that allows me to come and go as I please. Every time I return to Thailand, it resets the 90-day ritual. It’s a small bureaucratic inconvenience, but one that quietly reminds me: I’m still a guest here. My life is my own, but it’s also subject to stamps, signatures, and systems I didn’t grow up with.

So, I hired an agent. For around $300 a year, he handles it all—the visa renewals, the paperwork, the multiple-entry stamps, the 90-day checkins. I don’t have to wait in line or navigate the immigration office or a language I’m still learning. That peace of mind is worth every baht.

Still, I’m thinking about shifting the dates. If I can time it right, maybe I won’t have to be back in Thailand during monsoon season just to renew my visa. I’d rather be traveling when the skies open up and flood the streets again. Will see what happens as I investigate this.

There’s a strange kind of privilege in being able to play the game the system, ever so diligently and gently—move dates around, pay someone to help. But I don’t take it for granted. I’m not here to pretend I belong or entitled to certain rights in the same way as someone who was born here. But I’m not just passing through, either.

Somewhere in between guest and immigrant, I’m carving out a structure, a daily routine, a rhythm of life. A way of being here without pretending to be from here. Adapting to this culture and way of life is critical.

Food, Land, and What Nourishes Me

I’ve been a chef most of my life. Not just professionally, but in how I see the world—through ingredients, through seasonality, through the quiet alchemy of blending flavor and taste. With appreciation for the abundance that comes from the land and for those who work the land in loving ways.

Northern Thailand feeds me in more ways than one. The land here is generous. Rich river valleys and mountain air create microclimates where tropical fruits and temperate crops grow side by side.

At the local markets, I can find strawberries and peaches, fresh-picked from the highlands. Mangoes so ripe the juice drip down your chin. Greens I’ve never seen anywhere else and am still learning about—bitter, tangy, medicinal, and wild.

And the food. Yes, of course, there’s spice from those “birds eye” Thai chilis. There’s amazing salt flavor diversity coming from fermenting fish and soy beans. But there’s also variety, subtlety, and balance when you want it. You don’t have to burn another hole in your a__, I mean, tongue to eat well here.

More than the ingredients, it’s the approach to food that I find nourishing. It’s not dressed up. It’s not precious. It’s just…available. Honest. Made for the people who live here, delivered in plastic bags. It’s the people who dress it up for Instagram.

I’ve wandered markets all over the world—from Cairo to Cusco, from Istanbul to Kerala — and still, the fresh markets in Thailand feel like home. They remind me of what food is supposed to be: a relationship with land, with the people, with the historic traditions, with what’s in season, abundant and close to hand.

In this stage of life I find myself in, nourishment means more than taste. It’s being in sync, in rhythm, with the flow of life. Simplicity. Connection. With the earth. With the people. With myself.

Flowing… with the agriculture seasonality, a ripe mango from my mango tree, fresh strawberries just came down from the mountain, eaten standing barefoot in my (soon to be) garden.

Simplicity… drinking my locally grown and roasted coffee, with no urgency to get anything done.

Knowing… that I won’t break the bank and I don’t have to hustle to eat well.

This is what is feeding my soul now.

What It Means to Live a Good Life Now

This, I think, is the real question. What does it mean—now—to live a good life? To feel like a complete human. Unbroken. A life I don’t need a vacation from. I wrote about this before.

I used to say I wanted simplicity… and I still do. I imagined it as a kind of stillness, minimalism, a clearing where there is nothing that pulls at me. But I’ve come to see that simplicity isn’t passive at all. It’s an active choice and discipline.

Because I come from ‘merikkkah. Where everything says you should consume and want more. Where more is better. To increase the country’s gross national product… when it should be to help increase the gross national happiness. Slowing down feels like going against gravitational pull.

I don’t have to work anymore. That’s a gift many people never get. But the absence of a job doesn’t mean the presence of peace. What I choose to do with my time now—how I care for my body, how I tend to my mind, the thoughts I cultivate, who I allow into my inner world—that is my current personal work.

So I ask myself:

What does a flourishing life look like when I’m not chasing anything?
How do I stay awake to my life, not just fill it with busyness or pass the time unconsciously?
What do I still have to give back to the betterment of humanity and the planet — authentically, meaningfully—without slipping back into performance or feeling I have to prove something?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who do I want to walk with in this next chapter? Who sees me not for what I produce, but for who I am—when I’m not striving to produce anything?

That’s what’s in front of me.

It’s not a plan. Because I have no blueprint.
Just a path that unfolds with each honest and genuine step I take every day.
And my hope… that walking with open eyes, open hands, and an open heart… will always be enough.

4 Jul 2025

Listening: Connection Before Correction

by Maurice | posted in: Compassionate Conversation, Family, Heart Opening, No Shame or Blame, Openness | 1

When we speak, we are not asking to be advised, fixed, or given solutions. We are asking to be seen. To be understood. To be heard. And yet, people so often hear someone’s pain or confusion as a cry for help—something broken that needs repair. We rush in with suggestions, solutions, opinions and interpretations, convincing outselves we’re helping. We've been taught that love looks like solving problems and that care means offering the quickest escape from discomfort.

But love—real love—is slower than that. Love listens first. It holds space. It sees the other through their pain, not as their pain. It acknowledges their experiences as complete, not flawed. It allows someone to be whole, even when they may feel broken. True listening asks for stillness and presence without an agenda. It requires that we set aside the urge to fix, to judge, or to correct. It invites us to meet someone exactly where they are—not where we wish they were, and not where it would be easier for us to love them.

The rarest kind of love may not be based on usefulness, improvement, or potential. It is simply the grace of being loved for who we are, as we are.

What It’s Like to Receive (& Make Mistakes)

I’ve had moments where someone simply let me speak—and stayed with me. No interruption. No analysis. No direction. Just presence. It’s as if they opened a quiet room inside themselves and invited me in. In that space, I could be messy, uncertain, and unclear—and I was still welcome. When someone listens like that, something inside begins to untangle. I hear myself more clearly. I don’t need their advice because I start to discover my own clarity.

For 18 years, I participated in—and later facilitated—men’s support circles rooted in this kind of compassionate presence. Listening wasn’t just a skill; it was a lifeline. There was a man in our group who came every week, repeating the same story about how stuck he felt in his life. Week after week, for years, I sat and listened. I didn’t push him, didn’t offer solutions, didn’t ask for change. I was just present.

But one week, something in me shifted. He started in again, and I found myself losing patience. I snapped. I told him I was tired of hearing the same complaints without action. The room went silent. I knew immediately I had crossed a boundary. I felt my tail between my legs. That moment wasn’t just a lapse—it was a realization. Even with years of practice, I had limits. Even seasoned listeners get overwhelmed.

That experience taught me that listening is not about perfection. It’s not about never losing patience. It’s about noticing when we hit our limits, returning to presence, and honoring the relationship with honesty and humility. Listening means showing up with both compassion and self-awareness—respecting both the one who is speaking and the one who is listening.

The Contrast with What’s Modeled: In the Family

Most of us aren’t taught how to listen. In families, caring and love often looks like fixing. There's a rush to comfort, to offer advice, to smooth over someone’s pain. The intention may be care, but the impact is more often disconnection. We're taught to respond, not to stay. We’re rewarded for offering solutions, not for creating space where someone can be seen and heard without interference.

We become fluent in easing or erasing discomfort, instead of becoming fluent in holding it. Many of us grew up in households where the pattern of love was transactional: emotional struggles were met with instructions; feelings were corrected instead of welcomed. The result is a kind of love that’s efficient but not intimate. It can’t bear the silence of another’s pain without trying to cover it up. Listening, in these environments, becomes reactive rather than receptive.

The Contrast with What’s Modeled: In the Workplace

That same reflex appears in professional settings, though it wears a different mask. In workplaces, listening often becomes a tool for extraction—a way to gather information, manage perception, or streamline productivity. I remember a time at the college where I worked when the president attempted to balance the budget by laying off half the full-time instructors in the culinary department. The environment became tense and uncertain. I did my best to hold space, to listen to my colleagues as fear took hold.

Then the administration decided to combine two leadership roles into one impossible job. Everyone recognized how overwhelming it would be. Not even the vice president agreed with the newly created position. When the hiring process began, I spoke up and urged them to expand the candidate pool, to look for someone qualified who understood the scale of the job. But they dismissed my suggestions and hired someone with no culinary experience to lead the culinary arts department. I was told to “give it a chance.”

That moment crystallized the way institutions often pretend to listen without actually doing so. The decision was already made. Feedback was tolerated but not absorbed. It reinforced something I’ve come to understand more deeply over time: in many professional spaces, listening is not an act of recognition—it’s a tactic. The reward system prioritizes action and outcome. Presence, care, and trust don’t generate profit. The value of being seen is dismissed because it cannot be measured.

Where Trust Begins: The Space Rarely Given

The most transformative listening doesn’t come with advice, strategies, or timelines for healing. It comes with space. A space where we’re not interrupted, redirected, or evaluated. A space that doesn’t demand improvement unless we want it for ourselves.

Most of us were never taught to give that kind of space to others—or even to ourselves. It takes real patience to sit beside someone else’s pain without reaching for an exit ramp. It takes strength to stay emotionally present while setting aside the urge to fix. But true listening is a kind of quiet rebellion within ourselves; to quiet the urges to respond and offer unsolicited advice. True listening creates the conditions where people feel safe enough to be who they are. It tells us that our feelings don’t need justification, our stories don’t need polishing, and our wholeness isn’t dependent on being understood.

The truth is that life’s answers usually surface when we’re heard—not when we’re told what to do. This kind of space is rare. Most of us didn’t grow up with it. It’s not the default in families. It’s not built into the structures of work. And sometimes, even in therapy, we are interpreted before we are fully seen.

Real listening asks us to stay a little while longer, to soften a little bit more. To witness someone’s truth, someone’s pain, not through the lens of who they should be, but through the courage of who they already are. Maybe that’s the rarest kind of love: not the love that seeks to improve us, but the love that finds us most worthy when we are most real. Because relationships move at the speed of trust. And trust moves at the speed of being seen.

17 Jun 2025

Following the Voice, Learning to Let Go

by Maurice | posted in: Adventure, Compassion, Embrace Change, life transition, philosophy, Psychology | 0

This morning I sit in a small Istanbul coffee shop along the Bosphorus. The city hums and pulses around me — cars, motorbikes, trams, people rushing off to work, ferries gliding across the water, tourists drifting toward the Old City or wandering through Taksim Square. My chair is stiff. My legs ache from the twenty-five kilometers I’ve walked over the past few days. Part of me wants to lace up my shoes and walk some more, but another part knows today is for rest. Tomorrow, the Asian side of the city is calling.

No Regrets

I’m fortunate to be here — at this point in my life. Fifty-six. Still healthy. Money in the bank. I built a career in restaurants and hospitality, invested in real estate, and spent twenty-five years teaching Culinary Arts at a government college. Along the way, I’ve been lucky enough to gather a handful of good friends.

I have no second thoughts about leaving Amerikkkah. It’s no longer the country I grew up in — unrecognizable, really. I taught my students that the propaganda of the Amerikkkahn Dream was dead. You make your money, live modestly, and leave before the ground gives out beneath your feet. Life was never meant to be an endless hustle.

Inner Critic

For years I’ve sat with, listed to and battled with this voice inside me — what I’ve come to call my inner critic. I’ve worked with teachers, therapists, counselors, monks; I’ve sat in meditation halls, counseling rooms, workshops — all to better understand this particular current that runs through me.

This voice can have a harsh edge. Most people carry some version of it. We inherit it young, long before we know we’re carrying anything at all. For some of us, it grows strong early — as a survival mechanism, a way to stay small enough, careful enough, good enough to avoid the next wave of criticism waiting in the lurches.

I’ve learned to recognize where this voice has served me well — and where it does not. It sharpens me in the kitchen, pushing me to refine a dish, finding a better balance of flavors. But it has no place in relationship between two people.

The critic whispers: You’re not good enough, they are not good enough, the world is a fucked up place. And if you make the choice to believe it, if your personality identifies with it, it shapes you — quietly, relentlessly. You don’t even realize it’s simply an internal pattern. It becomes to feel factual. Deep down, I know that voice isn’t who I am. It isn’t you either. It’s just a voice from the past.

Double Displacement

I grew up in Amerikkkah in the 1970s — a time that, in some ways, held more openness, more possibility, more freedom. But also carried its own silent weights. Nobody wanted to hear you didn’t complain. You didn’t speak of family troubles. Achievement became the measure of how people saw your worth, even your self worth. Emotional vocabulary was thin; conversations about feelings were rare. You tried to keep to yourself, handling your own business.

Now I’m in Thailand — a world entirely its own. There is a kind of beautiful harmony here, as surface as it might sometimes be, a cultural leaning toward acceptance, an ease with uncertainty. But emotions often remain unspoken, kept inside and private. The deeper work of naming, processing, and sharing feelings doesn’t always have a place. At times, it has me question the emotional intelligence of the people — though I know, again, this is my inner critic speaking too.

I find myself in a kind of double displacement. The country I knew feels unfamiliar now. The one I live in doesn’t fully match my wiring. And wherever you go, there you are — the critic still travels with me, scanning the horizon, searching for flaws, looking for danger that no longer exists.

Projections

The inner critic doesn’t limit itself to my own self. It’s not just a private voice; it extends its reach outward. It scans the world around me — people, situations, even entire cultures — searching for flaws, weaknesses, missteps. It whispers: “This isn’t right. That could fall apart. Watch out for that one.”

In some ways, it’s still trying to protect me — keeping me alert, as if constant vigilance will keep the ground steady beneath my feet. But it also distorts my vision. I sometimes find myself seeing what’s wrong before I see what’s good. In relationships, it can push me to fix, correct, or control what doesn’t actually need fixing. In new environments, like this one, it can prevent me from fully receiving what’s being offered, because part of me is always assessing whether it’s safe enough to let my guard down.

The critic projects not just self-judgment, but judgment of everything. And yet, I know: that too is an old habit, a survival pattern — not the truth.

This habit of scanning doesn’t stop with individuals. My inner critic easily projects into the wider world — onto the politics and state of affairs back in Amerikkkah, into the wars and conflicts that seem endless, into the dysfunctions of government and greed. I see clearly — sometimes too clearly — the broken machinery that powers much of modern life.

Even here, living abroad, the critic finds new territory. In Thailand, I see the shadows behind kreng jai — where harmony sometimes silences truth, where the avoidance of conflict can quietly enable power imbalances. In Istanbul, I feel the old patterns stirring again — the undercurrents of control, historical wounds, and unspoken tensions in a culture still carrying layers of empire, religion, and national identity.

The voice that follows me doesn’t just search inside — it searches everywhere. At times, it helps me see what others may not name. But often, it leaves me standing outside the flow of life, tangled in judgment, unable to fully rest inside what simply is.

The Gift & The Challenge

The world I came from taught control, improvement, self-perfection. Always find what’s wrong so you can fix it. If you miss something, the ground might give way beneath you. Self-monitoring, hyper-awareness, constant striving — this was the emotional place I came from.

Thailand offers something else entirely — acceptance, non-attachment, the release of trying to control what cannot be controlled. Small flaws are let go. Harmony is protected. Suffering comes not from imperfection, but from the refusal to accept it.

At times, people here have said to me: Why do you always look for the mistakes?
They see an old coping mechanism, a foreign habit of mind. They’re not wrong. But they don’t see where it was born.

The gift — and the challenge — are bound together. This culture might teach me how to soften the critic’s grip. If I can allow myself to absorb even a little of this gentle acceptance, I might learn to live differently.

The challenge is trust — trusting that things won’t collapse if my critic stops scanning. Allowing imperfection to live — in myself, in others, in the cultures I’ve come from and the one I now inhabit. Learning to sit quietly inside life’s uncertainty.

The work, I’ve come to see, isn’t about the impossibility of silencing the critic entirely. It’s about understanding what sits beneath its harsh voice. The critic holds pain differently than the softer, more vulnerable parts inside me. While the wounds of the past will always live inside me, the critic has taken on the power of those who once did the hurting. In that reversal, I sometimes become the one who turns that harshness inward — and at times, outward onto others. What was once done to me, I now risk doing to myself, and to the world around me.

But like the vulnerable self, the critic too can change. If I can begin to imagine that these old roles aren’t fixed — if I can practice a kind of inner flexibility — then something new becomes possible. Slowly, in small steps, a different kind of relationship can take shape between the part of me that once judged harshly and the part that longed to be protected. This is, as Process-work calls it, a “path made by walking.” And I am still walking.

Mending Trust
Broken Trust
Trapeze Trust
Links of Trust
Broken Trust

1 Jun 2025

The Dark Roads of Trust and Its Ghosts

by Maurice | posted in: Adventure, Compassion, Embrace Change, Negative Self Talk, No Shame or Blame, Personal Growth, The Human Condition | 1

I travel down dark streets through Thailand at night. There are no police patrols, no one to call if something goes wrong. Vehicles speed closely past me that I can feel the wind shift across my skin.

Am I being held together by rust and a prayer?

The road is a kind of battleground … not just disarray from broken machines, but from the emotional wreckage behind the wheels.

Including myself.

Trust isn’t just absent, its upended. To trust, means to invite harm and welcome the possibility of betrayal. Letting down my guard would be like driving blindfolded. I walk unarmored, unprepared into a fight I didn’t start, and one I can never win.

I can feel the layers of armor I have putting on over the years. There were times I thought I had shed some of it, peeling it away layer by layer, piece by piece. Yet my antennas are up; I remain on high alert.

I stay ready.

Even if nothing comes, and sometimes nothing does. The weight of the readiness does not lift.

I carry it mile after mile, day after day, and it’s exhausting.

The Tension: “Just Let It Go”?

I want to be able to let go of some of this armor and begin to trust again. There are days when I can feel it loosening, when I can breathe a little easier.

However, recent events have reminded me how quickly trust can turn with every small betrayal. They keep me wary and armored once again. It’s not just the memories of past hurts. It’s here too in the present. In new faces and old patterns.

Another betrayal. More silence, where there should have been transparency and honesty.

I thought my father’s illness would strip things down to what mattered in the family, an opportunity to bring people closer. For a time, I believed old distances could close. That we could meet, not as we had been, but as we needed to be for him.

I opened myself, carefully, like loosening a seam that had been stitched shut for too long. But the familiar disappointments returned — quiet and relentless. Trust doesn’t only break loudly; sometimes it just erodes, a slow wearing away of hope over time.

Yet, I live in a contradiction … wanting to soften and be open … while needing to brace myself for the worst.

The armor I have worn, and shed, and worn again – has never been about my strength. It has always been about my own survival.

And I know, surviving is not the same as living.

Can Trust & Loyalty be Bought?

It leaves me wondering what trust even means when it has a price tag attached.

Living in Thailand has added a new layer to this experience. Here, trust and loyalty can feel transactional — not something built slowly over time, but something bought and sold. The role men play is often defined as economic provider. For foreigners, that expectation is turned up even higher.

I’ve been told that men can “buy” a woman’s loyalty – with monthly allowances, with gifts, with the constant offering of financial security. It’s a very different concept than what I grew up with in the West, where loyalty and trust were supposed to be built slowly, like feeding a piggy bank one coin at a time. And when betrayal happened, the piggy bank of trust wasn’t just cracked, it shattered. Trust is emptied completely.

Here, trust feels more fragile.
More tied to money.

Maybe that’s why it feels safer to stay armored.
It’s hard to trust what can be bought and sold.

The Cost of Armoring

I am paying the cost of wearing this armor. It’s heavy. Slowly wearing me down. It shows up in ways I don’t always notice – in my hesitation to trust again, in second guessing myself and the constant feeling that I have to watch my back.

It’s keeping me from living the kind of life I want, one where I can breathe easily and not be on guard all the time.

The armor, the distrust, keeps me safe. But also keeps me distant.
Alone.
Once again, I am tired of carrying it.

Sometimes it’s hard to know whether I’m inside a legitimate protection mechanism or if I am stuck in a pattern I don’t know how to step out of.

Yet every time I try to loosen up, to begin opening, to love and trust again, something happens to remind me why I put it on in the first place.
It’s not just old stories playing in my head.
It’s the reality that even now, not everyone is safe. Not everyone can be trusted.

I have been able to release some of this armor before in my life.
I know trust can be built again.
It will take patience and time.
I want to believe I don’t have to live armored forever.

But for now, I will carry it.
Because for now, it’s what I know.

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