Time to think

Seeing as things have gone to shit in a lot of ways over the past few days, I figured it was time for some perspective. When everything seems to be going bad, it has to be for a reason, and I think that I need to figure out what exactly this reason -which has been relentlessly beating me down since wednesday-is.

When I consider what a bad day consists of, I tend to play a bit of a blame game, and point my finger at something or someone else, external from myself, who is tinkering with my perception. For instance, my work and the people at work have been getting me down. Complaining about my 'irrational' way of going about my business, when I myself see their lack of any sort of work habits as being quite irrational. My living environment has been annoying me, as the director of my 'home' seems to take great pleasure in poking his nose into my personal business and trying to control every aspect of my life. And finally, I simply am not happy with what I am doing with my days at SHAPC, at my NGO... it simply isn't what I imagined, and all the efforts that I have been making to improve it are proving to be useless.

This general unhappiness that has suddenly burst my bubble has led me inward to find a solution to my problems. The fact of the matter is this: I am unhappy because I am not doing what I want with my time here in Vietnam. I wanted to get hands on work in the field of HIV/AIDS, I wanted to learn how to work in a professional environment, I wanted to take away and contribute all which my optimistically driven energy could muster! But, alas, I find myself spending days in front of my computer with nothing to do, I am given shit jobs like editing documents from bad english into english.

Perspective! Perspective...
I'm sitting here in this little room located on the outskirts of Hanoi. After sitting outside and recounting one of the most influential dreams I've ever had to 2 girls who live in this building, I suddenly realize the importance of putting everything into a wider perspective. I'm not happy because I can't find a meaning within the every day activities which occupy my life. I have lost contact with the big picture, I seem to have stepped too far into my life and have been unable to account for the unreasonable distortions which my common sense rejects about this country. But it came back to me tonight, after a day of rest and contemplation. I simply needed a jolt, and this is what I found:

My work, my coworkers, and this building where I live: they piss me off. This is an unavoidable fact - I could attempt to justify it to myself, to say 'oh whatever, living through this will make me appreciate blah blah blah'. I could. But I won't.
Instead, I would like to approach this life problem from the side, instead of head on.

I went outside at around 11 pm. I sat down and I thought about the meaning of simply being able to recognize that I am alive. I am here, I am now. This sentence, though simple, is extremely powerful when used in the right now. I have been feeling a mental and emotional discord in my life, with my work and living conditions. However, I have been in a greater discord with the very aspect which connects me to this larger reality which work and home are simply a part of! I am alive, god damn it! I am in a foreign country, I am learning a new language, being exposed to a new culture, living within a very complicated and headache inducing political structure (which I had up till now only read about in books - thanks Marx), and I am in the process of planning out my life. Life is GOOD! How can I let work and my home get me down when there is so much else going on in this picture? I don't want to be brought down by others or by my work... I want to be the dynamic human being who looks past the small instances of discord and be at one with everything else. Sure, I am not doing what I thought I would, but who has the nerve to think that anything they predict will actually ever happen? Leave the precise predictions to the physicists and mathematicians, I say.

Seriously though, if my organization has no work for me, I will have to find something to occupy myself with. Maybe attempt to learn something new every day, maybe work on my Vietnamese, maybe even catch up on some Nietzsche or Wittgenstein. Something, anything, to help me move past and see beyond the everyday images which occupy my vision, so that I can move beyond mere sight and into the realm of the pure potential of being.

Sounds lofty, but life is such that if you get too caught up in the very instant, you risk loosing sight of the marvellous colours, sights, and sounds which occupy so much more space than your narrow vision allows into your brain.

I think my own vision had been narrowed for a while, and it's time that I rediscover the wonders of being alive. To hell with work, to hell with not having any running water this week end - I'm going to do what I want and walk to my own beat.

And you know what? I feel better already!