So-Crates!

The sense of loneliness and emptiness is the hardest for me.  I mean, it’s really humbling to move to a place like Bangkok with no working grasp of the language or customs and no “fixer” or guide to help teach us.  Covid is part of that, since we can talk to the folks that moved here before us and before Covid and hear about how they had a twice weekly guide available to them that would take them into the city and translate and help them learn and see places.  Those services were stopped with Covid and not coming back any time soon.  So, it is a challenge.  I’m sure someone reading this will know about Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s “trilogy of six books” (I miss the sense of humor, rest in peace, good sir) and if not, use your local library and check it out.  The first three, at least, are worth the read.  But, in the books, there is a character named Zaphod Beeblebrox is punished by being put into the Infinite Vortex (I’m working off memory here, sorry if I’m slightly off on any details) and shown his exact place and meaning in the “whole of time and the universe” and this is punishment because “most experience a vast sense of loneliness and emptiness in knowing that they make up less than a speck of dust floating in the cosmic void”.  Zaphod, however, being “so cool you could store a side of meat in him” and a complete and total “hoopy frood” (don’t ask) he is unfazed by this.  

I’m both of those things.  Both amazed and crushed by my sense of place in the world and universe, but the arrogant, ego driven, constantly performing (Thanks Miss Mandy “Renee” Brown), and completely vain part of me understands Zaphod and is unfazed.

There are, however, stretches of time that are lonely.  That are empty.  That are scary.  That are hard.  I can go thru stretches of time, especially with J working and life being nutty and busy, where I will go up to three days at a time where (outside of Kiddo or in passing convo with J) that I will live life understanding NOTHING that is said to me.  Not that I understand nothing, but the understanding takes complete concentration and even that is only for 5% or less.

No wonder some people with dementia and Alzheimer's lash out and are aggressive and frustrated.  

It’s also humbling.  As an adult.  To understand less than a child, even a small child, and try to navigate the world.  Adding the complexity of doing it with a child while that child learns and asks things and you need to navigate in a world you don’t understand and can’t speak or communicate outside of a basic level.  

It’s vast.  It’s complex.  It’s knowing that you are less than a speck of dust floating in time and space and still being able to function.  It’s humbling.  It’s leaning into the uncomfortable and being willing to make a mistake.  Take it from me, I’ve ordered my chicken noodle soup “not spicy” and J recently found out that she was ordering her ice coffee Dog Sweet, instead of not sweet. (You’d need to hear it to understand it, but not and dog sound very similar, also, once being a short word and the other being elongated a bit, J was ordering with extended emphasis on not, saying it very close to Dog).  You just need to laugh and accept that you made a mistake, but take the corrections when offered (some ladies at the market have taken to helping) and learning as you go.  

As proud as I am to say that J or I can order Fried Rice in Thai (as long as it’s chicken, shrimp, or pork) or ask for the bathroom, we know less than a toddler.  But, we try.  Always, we try.  And we have each other.  And the friends we’ve made here that are either in this with us (newbies) or understand what it’s like (the experienced ones).  We have our friends back in the states and J has her sister.  

We are humans on this big unique rock and hurtles thru space and we can’t even fathom that depth or reaches of that.  Life could stop tomorrow, but the rock would spin on.  We have a blink, in the grand scheme, and so many of us (especially now) focuses on the wrong things.  Instead of understanding our relative unimportance and doing our best to enrich ourselves in experiences while setting up our children and their children, etc etc etc for better, we quibble over silly things; Like who was born on what part of this little rock that spins thru the murk and left over from the Big Bang.  Or how many little pieces of paper with some old guy on it that you’ve collected.  Some of us even argue (and go to war) over which invisible and imaginary dude lives in the clouds above us.

This vast, lonely, and unimaginably huge place exists.  Have existed for eons and will continue for eons after humans have come and gone.  And I’m sorry if you don’t like it or find my writings and thoughts to be cold or callow or even blasphemy on your ideals.  But that’s the thing.  Those are yours.  Hold on to them and see them as making up the unique you that is part of what makes up the complexity of you.  And if you are reading this, know that we like that about you.  Maybe not enough to subscribe to it ourselves, but enough to call you friend or want to share this blog and these experiences with you.  Why can’t that just be enough?  Why can’t that just be accepted?  

Look forward and back.  Eons on both sides.  Time incalculable.  Before you and once you’re gone.  There was one Shakespeare.  One Da Vinci.  One Homer.  One Joan of Arch.  One Rosa Parks.  One Einstein.  One Hawking.  One Mozart.  The rest of us as insignificant.  And even the names mentioned…. Will they be remembered and how many other names are forgotten?  Eons on both sides.  Less than a speck of dust.  What an interesting existence some of us choose to make it.

PS.  This blog's title.  See Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  :)