Preparing for "Re-entry"

Well after a month of ISP, the longest paper I’ve ever written, our program’s concluding events concluded, and a long-neglected blog, I think it’s time for one last update before I head back to Amerika.  Tomorrow.

December 15^th.  Advent calendars have been counting, Christmas music playing, for more than two weeks already, and though this is probably my favorite time of year at home, I have yet to really feel ready to leave.  It’s seems so final, so abrupt.  We’re all beginning to realize the fact that we have to shift back to what we came from a quick but experience-filled 3 and a half months ago.  And given the fact that it somehow seems difficult at this point for me to remember exactly what living in Amerika is like, my mind can’t quite wrap itself around how what I feel Bali has taught me is going to fare in the transition back. 

So what has it taught me?  That’s a loaded question.  But I figure if I can attempt to put some of it into words, maybe it will stick with me a little better.

During our group’s final outing, a trip to Candi Dasa last weekend, 7 of us had a last hurrah dinner at this bizarre and misplaced modern hotel we found amidst the traditional homestays and restaurants.  I guess it was good preparation, a little sampling of cultural confusion.  We sat in pod-shaped seats of metallic red and had gazpacho appetizers and rice in cone formations served to us by a waiter sporting a single black glove, while just beyond the open walls local families bathed in an algae-laden public pond.   I think it was an experience only appropriate just before “re-entry”, as our program is calling it.  What was more memorable than the restaurant though was the self-conducted “circle time” we had afterwards.  Beachside, passing around a power stone, we engaged in the cheesiness (but sincerity) of telling each other something we feel like we’ve learned.  Beyond personal lessons, there seem to be certain overarching lessons that come just with immersion in the Balinese atmosphere.

There’s the focus on today—the gratitude that simply awaking to find friends, family, food, and opportunity begs.  Through setting aside time each morning and night to acknowledge what one has with an offering, through passing many an hour carefully folding banten for one’s own or a community member’s ceremony, there’s hardly a moment when this feeling of gratitude isn’t being perpetuated.   Pleasure is woven into simplicity.  Just being among friends and family allows for day after day of contentment.  And the steady flow provides little need or want to focus on anything other than the day that’s presently unfolding.

Even in a study of grief this was the lesson. Talk of sadness entailed talk of how the feeling is overcome, which made for a study of happiness too.  I found that the Balinese frame their goals in terms of what they can do for others, personal achievements taking a backseat to this need to carry out sacrifice.  By not always working towards something, the present assumes a greater focus.  And by not working for one’s own good but for that of others, contentment becomes not personal but communal.

One of my Ibu friends used the phrase “making happiness”.  “Were you sad when grandmother died?” I asked. “Only a little.  We tried our best to make happiness beforehand,” she responded.  And that’s what the Balinese seem to be doing, day after day after day.   

Even the language here begs this relaxed positivity.  Three of the most common things to hear are “sudah” (already), “belum” (not yet), and “tidak apa apa” (literally, it’s nothing).  Life is framed in terms of what’s already been and what’s still to come, making the notion that things will unfold at the right place and time implicit.   Tidak apa apa!  Don’t worry about it! Things go and go, day after day, just the way they should.  And if something hasn’t been done yet, there’s always tomorrow—a day that comes with the comforting assurance of progressing with simplicity and thanks. 

I’ve also learned the largeness of things:  people’s feelings, motives, wants.  With a mind that tends to zero in on detail, I had to breathe in a little for this one; I think I felt myself take a big step back. 

There’s so little need for analyzing ins and outs, details of minute words and actions, especially if those words and actions are one’s own.  Each moment of each person unfolds for the same overarching reason.  And that’s so that it may be offered as an opportunity—a step or a direct passageway towards this “making” of individual and/or communal happiness.   Traditions, religions, and labels may separate us, but the focus inherent? It’s the same.  We’re just a whole lot of people, just trying to be happy in a whole lot of world.

I don’t think the idea is that difficult to realize, but I think its implications are difficult to actively apply.   Whereas I wanted first to uncover the differences that perplexed me about grief in the Balinese mindset, I instead uncovered differences that somehow made sense.  It was the bounds of the mindset I approached them with that created the perplexity.  But in unbinding, merely loosening them, the dividing details spurred by uniting motives began to assume an understandable shape. 

This realizing has come not only from the Balinese—my keluarga, teachers, and neighbors, but also from the people in my group—people who I’ve gotten to know in a way that maybe only our current circumstances could allow.  I’ve never been more aware of my friends’ bowel movements.  Heck, I guess I’ve never been more aware of my own bowel movements..

And maybe that’s a detail in and of itself that I won’t miss, but there’s this closeness, this seeing each other in our states most messy and most solid (baha) that this constant and detailed interaction entails.  The bonds we formed as we transitioned together were only strengthened given that that transition placed us amidst a society whose main joys come from one action: visiting with others.  We sat and we visited.  We traveled and we visited.  We learned and we visited.  We kind of only stopped visiting when we had to (try) to go poop.  So how are we supposed to leave the people we’ve passed such a span of days just enjoying the regularity of chatting with?  Tomorrow’s not really expected to be that different from today here.  But the tomorrow we’ve arrived at now? It’s literally a world away. 

 

When I was getting all sentimental last night, about to sit down to write this, I reached to lift up my backpack only to find the side COVERED in an ant army hauling a dead baby lizard out of the side pocket.  That was a quick and effective reminder of the things I’m not so sad to leave..

So I’m off tomorrow.  I think I could fill pages and pages with more but there’s not time now.  I’ve got tonight and tomorrow morning to visit with Bali, 4 painfully long plane flights, and then Wednesday I’ll be home.  I’ll have already had one Wednesday though!  I think?

Thank you to everyone who has read this!! Sorry it was neglected.  Maybe I’ll write more once I’m over the jetlag. 

I CAN’T WAIT to see the Christmas season in full swing.  That’s one thing Bali is seriously lacking..

:)