Right now, simply feeling okay, the ability to negotiate a full day with a minimum of discomfort, to have enough spare energy to experience joy, these are the goals.
But then what?
My goal, hope, idea, prayer is that once one of the systems starts going again, the others will kickstart with it. And then what?
Part of me wants to finish the school year--after so much time and energy spent learning to live and function here, wouldn't it be nice to have the opportunity to do so without the world grayed out by illness?
At the same time, I would be only to happy to squirt out a comet of the nastiest discharge I've faced over here all the way out of Thai airspace. How wonderful would be the succor of home!
But to move home, to run away from the job here, to leave without another gig lined up, it feels like defeat, and after working so long and hard to make it this far, after discovering how wonderful it can be to live abroad.
Given the job market, how much weight would that lacuna carry? Given that I've discovered not just a way to live but a life with great potential for enjoyment, why come back if I'm getting a leg up?
Then again, what employer would hold leaving against me? And would I want to work for them?
It's a matter of that initial screening--what level of competition is there, and how selective can the screeners be?
And how to reconcile feet that itch for the adventure and challenge, excitement and discovery of being abroad with a deep yen for the mountains back home?
Here's where Buddhism and I differ, and my unenlightened state becomes painfully obvious: there's the idea that what is simply is. Nothing is inherently good or bad, and anything has the potential to be as happy or tragic as the perceiver is willing to let it be.
A big part of me knows that I am in a good position: I love the kids, it's great living in town just a few minutes from work, it's fun having the frogger-crossing in the morning and the vendor carts in the evening. There is challenge and payoff all over, and a job I've learned to do. Why leave that?
Because it is not enough.
For some people, sitting on a whitesand tropical beach is enough. They can listen to the gentle lap of wavelets and be at indefinite peace. It is enough.
I've learned that, for me, the tropics are not enough. It's not enough to have the job and livelihood--I itch and glance and glimpse around, now paranoid of the next bump in the sidewalk, the next disease, a snake falling from the trees, a spider about to jump and bite, a scratch that turns septic. To me, the tropics are a scary place.
And I'm now a very different person than I was before, but even then, to sit in the mountains was enough. When I needed a break and escape, it was enough to dip just a toe into an alpine lake. It's hard to imagine that it would have decreased in the elapsed time.
And then there's the question of what I CAN do if I came home--the rote lift-op option is hardly possible, and really I'm after a temporary and part time gig to cover gas money to visit friends and family while getting my feet back under me. And then I'd love to be out adventuring again. But how to find a job that will pay California gas prices without over-taxing my body?
There's one thing for sure: no more foreign hospitals. No more illness. It's time to be alive and well.
Sent from Brutus the iPad
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