I sit here on Kay and Jilly’s farm in Yasothon, Thailand after a week on the farm. A week of slowing down, getting back in touch with the land and allowing the body to adjust to the heartbeat of nature. The plants get watered, the chickens and geese get fed, the chicks are hatching from the eggs, watching the papayas and bananas ripening and making roselle hibiscus tea and aloe vera juice. Making trips into town for food for the humans and for the animals. It’s a pace of life I’ve always been able to easily settle into and one I prefer over the city life.
When I have been given the chance to spend some significant time with people during my travels I always ask a lot of questions about their lives. I want to know about people’s joys and struggles and how they are able to overcome life’s obstacles to put the joy back in their lives. Suffering, pain, and misery exist in life is the first truth in a doctrine called the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism. Nobody can escape from dealing with life’s struggles no matter where you are in the world. We are all the same human beings.
Every morning at the farm I sit at the table with Kay after eating breakfast “solving the world’s problems” while Jilly waters the plants. When I tell him we are solving the world’s problems, he smiles at us and asks when he will be seeing the results. Kay and I converse about the depths of life’s trials and tribulations… from the struggles of growing up as children in the families that we did, to our relationships, to children, to societal norms and structure, and most importantly… we offer each other’s wisdom on how we can become more accepting and how we have been able to become accepting… of whatever life brings to us.
While sharing some of our life experiences with each other, I realized how real we think all of our struggles are, and it’s only the stories around them that are different. Our struggles are all the same as each other… not getting the love we think we deserve, stories from the past that we cannot let go of, family of origin, judgment, betrayal, loneliness, addiction, oppression, and all the others that you can think of. Our ego wants to think that we are the only ones that suffer like we do.
One thing we need to ask ourselves when sitting with our perceived suffering is… are we living the most productive, passionate and loving lives we can possibly live, given the resources and knowledge that we currently have. You might be surprised at the answers you get. And most importantly, accepting ourselves right where we are in that moment, being curious, allowing life to unfold and be revealed to us.
Of course, the mind or the ego, will have something to say when outcomes don’t go the way we think they should have turned out or when unplanned change happens unexpectedly. There’s nothing like traveling to unfamiliar cultures and countries that has provided me the opportunity to go with the flow. At times I have gotten upset thinking things should be different and in a short amount of time, I’ve realized how pointless that is and I would only be making myself miserable should I choose to continue to be upset.
It really doesn’t matter the country which we originate from or the political system that we are in. It doesn’t even matter the faith or religion that we were brought up with or converted to. Being human and dealing with the trials and tribulations of the human condition does not care what race, color, culture or creed we are from.
The solutions to our struggles are universal. The answer is being able to weather all the storms, individually and together, that will help us grow to get through times of darkness. Because the light is always on the other side. It’s easy to lose focus during the moments of suffering and not be able to see the bigger picture and remember to have faith that there is light on the other side.
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One of my favorite artists, perfect for this topic… Alexi Murdoch… check him out…
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