As Easy As

Sometimes we complicate things.

The truth is, life is as difficult as we allow ourselves to admit it is. This is not to say that challenges and hardships don't exist. For me to say that there is not injustice in the world would be ignoring truths that present themselves regularly, globally. This is not to say that some things really are terrible to have to deal with. I get it. Truly.

Today, however, I was reminded how easy life really is. A friend handed me 20 baht, enough to buy papaya salad at the stand outside because I was making it hard on myself. I decided that instead of trying to break a 500 which is virtually impossible in the small market we meet, I would nibble on a snack and wait until I got home four hours later to get any real food. This on a 100 degree day with a bike ride back to my house that lasts around 20 minutes. Okay, not my best idea.

Tonight, it hit me again. I was packing and decided to try to fit 5 days worth of clothes for a place I'd never been into my book bag which simply wasn't meant for this. I folded this way and that. Packed again and again to no avail. How easy was it, then, to take out my larger backpacking bag and put what I needed inside with room to spare? Sometimes, it's just too easy. We have to make it hard on ourselves, right?

The time is coming for visiting our new sites. I will be traveling to Isan, an area in the Northeastern part of Thailand, along with about half of my fellow volunteers from this year. We're spread out, for sure, but to know that so many of us will be living in a place known for beautiful sights, fun people, insect eating, and different languages, there is a certain amount of relief that the newness of it all will be shared by so many of us. There are the jitters that I can only assume come when a person meets a community who has applied for them and gone through countless interviews and screenings before I arrive, hoping they'll embrace me as one of their own. As my bag sits next to my door, my script for countless situations lays on my desk, wrinkled from over-reading, and my mind begins to slow down from another long day, I take it all in.

Life in Thailand doesn't have to be as easy as pie. Indeed, I haven't seen a pie of any sort since my arrival in this incredible land. But I do realize that things do not have to be as difficult as we might make ourselves believe they must be. Certainly, with a shift of perspective, a calm breath, an mind open to accepting a solution, one will materialize far more easily. Dare I say, "As easy as...Thai?"

Yep, there it is.