Stranger Faces

As ideas came and went for making a living I found myself slowly adapting to this new life against all the odds and in the face of friends and family thinking I am utterly crazy not to return home but to do so simply didn't feel right for me. If there is anything i had learnt even by this time, it was to do what feels right no matter how hard or foolish it sounds - the feeling is far more reliable, I have found, than left brain driven "reasons" with their hidden agenda for safety and inertia.

Stranger Faces

Sat in a corner window overlooking the central street of the old city in Chiang Mai at its busiest time of the week, Sunday evening’s street market, I see the many faces that come to pick and choose the many colourful gifts that will soon adorn homes across the globe as their adventure ends and they return to their daily life at home. For me, though ‘farang’ (Western), I am now home, truly home, as my heart has chosen this to the exclusion of the land that saw me grow into what I have now become, a writer and adventurer for whom fear no longer acts as a deterrent for action.

Those many faces from all walks of life and many cultures will largely return to the safety of their existence in their own home countries, their own nurturing society, never to experience the challenges of rebirth in a foreign land, naked, divested of all familiar vestiges of a former life. As I struggle through this period of initial acclimatisation, I could almost envy the easy way home that many will follow, yet in reality nothing but nothing would have me short-change my heart and soul on what they have chosen and now enjoy more than endure.

Understanding this helps me celebrate my achievements to date: the gradual adjustment to this colourful yet sometimes unforgiving land; the eager absorption of a new culture; the slightly self-conscious attempts to speak a sometimes musical, sometimes harsh sounding tongue; the determination to make a life for myself in the face of any and all adversity. And as I receive my first draft brochure that will hopefully allow me to begin to make a living here, I feel proud, exhilarated, anxious and, above all, at home.

The Onset of Winter of the Spirit

The journey seemed to step up a notch once I arrived in Thailand. Facing so many changes, so many challenges, my self esteem could only go one of two ways! My greatest challenge was money to live on. I had had to borrow money from a friend to get here and survive for the first few months. I struggled to set up a greetings card business under the Sanitara brand which was created during a meditation here in Thailand. That business has had stops and starts throughout the two-year period due to a lack of funds to get it off the ground, fund product development and find sales channels. However, on the positive side, it now has a comprehensive portfolio of cards designed to "lift the spirit", some designs of which called upon me to give up old prejudice about who I was and rise above them to produce simple but attractive designs consistent with the wording.

The Onset of Winter of the Spirit

It is as if the forthcoming winter and the imminent drying up of money have conspired to bring my usual positive mind to ground. The resultant effect on my body and spirit has been to lower my energy considerably (causing a cold and a multitude of other minor discomforts) and to obscure the signals from within, the source that normally lights my every step. With a heavy heart I let fear crush my otherwise strong spirit and, in so doing, everything is agonising. No wonder then that my body has become a tainted canvas spotted with bruises and cracks that betray the pain within. In these dark days, old familiar doubts are resurrected, questioning my ability to “prove my worth” or even to provide a basic living for myself.

On moving to a new home with my new partner, I allow these now fermented doubts to surface, with tears of humiliation and apprehension. Purchases of basic needs serve only to deepen the pain and self pity that are normally alien in my freshly restored heart. Yet these thoughts, these doubts, these fears are no more real now that when first they were created by a far younger me lacking the wisdom to distinguish truth from illusion. Can it really be that I am so worthless that I cannot survive? Or rather, better I see the folly in such dark fears and, reassured by the recognition of the illusion, I take action in the belief that if I can rise above myself and my dark nightmares I can create whatever I want for myself in the fullness of time. Guided by the light to this re-awakened truth, I set about a plan of action for short-term survival and long term abundance. Or as the light within me said: be in action.

And within 24 hours of this shift in perspective, money for the reality I choose to create (a trip to Bangkok by plane, not bus, and staying in my usual 5-star hotel) came to me out of the blue when an old business associate offered me commission on work undertaken for a client I introduced to him. In fact, he went further and added more in gratitude for my help in setting up his business some years ago. In trust and action, so I create my reality, a reality that includes abundance.