I got it!

Yay!

Oh yeah, I'm smart!

I just, at 4am, am able to fully understand yesterday's quote- Woo Hoo for my learning disability!

My problem was that I perceived the word "disappear" as something negative. I thought it meant that in order to love others as family we had to stop loving our family in that true manner. Now I see a more positive interpretation of the word "disappear" and so the quotation has a whole different meaning for me!

So my present understanding is that if we are offered enough love early in life from our family members and a supportive environment within our family, then our family ties will not seem to exist as we grow older because we will be secure and confident enough to extend the love and support we received from our family to every other group and relationship that we encounter, while knowing that we are not required to give our family member's preferential treatment due to the fact that it should be assumed that they will always love us and we them.(Wow! I don't think I'll ever need to worry about getting Alzheimer’s because my sentence structures are so confusing! See: Alzheimer's for more info!)

Furthermore, there is no need to define a family as a group from which we receive love and acceptance because, ideally, we should be receiving this in other places as well. We should not only treat our family members well and be treated well by our families but also mirror this reciprocity within daily life and the larger society as a whole. What a lovely thought.

I am so so tired, bordering on delirious. Half a paper left, which will be finished by tomorrow afternoon in addition to an artsy project that I'm actually looking forward to doing. However, after I finish the paper tomorrow I will consider myself done!

Good night All. I will be dreaming of an idyllic world in which we all can conceive of an idyllic, unconditionally loving family.

Lesson: A Family is what you make of it

Quote of the day:

"What is a family? It is the place where we feel an atmosphere of love and unity.And if you can feel this unity in a broader sphere, then gradually your family ties will disappear.What is the purpose of family life? It is where we can share emotions however we need to and as freely as possible. The Individual is the one who is cut off, separated. When you are part of a group, living for others, you broaden yourself. This really is family life."
- Swami Prajnanpad

Hmm. .

Why should "feeling unity in a broader sphere" lead to the disappearance of family ties? Wouldn't it make more sense for this to lead to the inclusion of more people into your family as you broaden the concept of family to include a wider range of supportive relationships? I would be fine at looking at “family” within more conventional terms, such as a core Western family or an extended family including remote ties to cousins twice removed, although I believe that this quote is approaching the term “family” from a more abstract perspective, which is why I do not understand how we can lose our ties as we broaden our perspective. Isn’t that the purpose of this quote? To emphasis the goal of serving others and expanding the group of people with whom we can develop feelings of love and unity?

I like the section about the purpose of family life. In some families it is true. I know that in my family we were always allowed to share emotions freely and even when we were not they often came out because that is what families do to you. . they make you emotional ;)

On my trip to Bali there were three young women, roughly all about the same age who had all been adopted. They had each grown up in very different family environments and had different perceptions of their "real" mothers. It was interesting to listen to the ways in which each of these young woman described her feelings concerning her adoptive parents. It seemed that each girl, despite any differences in how she was raised, considered the family who had raised her as her real family, even though she knew they were not her biological parents. The most dramatic differences among these three girls was in how they viewed their biological mothers and their mothers’ decisions to give them up.

This made me think, when we separate as adults, do we re-create our families in other situations? Do we ever find a group of people that allows us to feel the same way as the people who raised us? Perhaps we are always re-enacting our family dynamics somewhat similar to object-relations theory. Hmm . . I think that this quote was approaching the term "family" from a very broad perspective and although I think I understand the meaning of the quote and agree with its message, I'm not sure that I would have used the same terminology to convey this message because the term "family" is so charged for people. What if someone's family does not embody love and unity? Sure, it ideally should convey these principles but what if it doesn't, can we learn to establish relationships and develop love and unity within other relationships? Can we choose to make another group our family because our biological or even adoptive families failed? How much more difficult is love, unity and security to learn if we are not given it from an early point in our social development, i.e. from our families?

These are the thoughts that are coursing through my head presently. Though I may not be very coherent because my brain has been fried by power yoga! Now on to write my final paper. Hopefully this will be the last sleep-deprived night in a while

P.S. I wanted to send out a big THANK YOU to a Ms Laurie Beth for stopping by tonight. It was great to see a familiar face!

Power Yoga

I tried Power Yoga today!! 100 degrees in there! Phew! I got dizzy after an hour and had to leave early. I think I've found my new challenge!

Not so good

The countries I've visited in the world. . .not as impressive- The red is basically where I've been and the gray is where I'd like to go

However, this mapping system is not so good, because it looks better if you've visited larger countries. For instance, because I've been to two places in canada I get to include all of Canada as a country to which i've visited and it looks impressive. Sri Lanka and Indonesia don't look impressive but China does. If I really cared about this stupid map I might start planning my vacations based on how large the country is. Australia, Brazil and India here I come!



create your own visited country map

Pretty Good!

My sister-in-law introduced me to a program that allows you to view all the states that you have visited.

28 down . . not too bad:



create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

Tired

Lesson: It is hard to think of a lesson when you are too tired :)

Quote of the day:

"Husband and wife merge in each other. They are one in two or two in one."
-Muhatma Gandhi

To be quite frank, I like this quote, but I do not have a lot of thoughts on it. If you'd like to share your thoughts, feel free. I also am really curious in what context Gandhi made this comment. Interesting. . .

Hope everyone has a wonderful wet day!
-L

Lesson: There Is Satisfaction in Being Different

Quote of the day:

"Variety is the first principle of life. What makes us formed beings? Differentiation. Perfect balance will be destruction."
- Swami Vivekananda


In Bali, on the last night before we left our tour guide for our "home-stay" (which turned out to not really be a home-stay at all) we had a huge feast to celebrate our time together and say goodbye to our guide and our hosts at the Oka Wati Hotel. After the dinner we were told that we would be going to "The Frog Dance", the Balian version of The Frog Prince story, and then we would go to a temple ceremony. To enter the temple we had to wear a traditional Balinese outfit. The women's outfits were comprised mostly of: A sarong with the flap falling in the front middle portion of the legs, a sash tied in a specific way on the left hip (of course mine was tied to the right, woops!), an elastic corset and a bra and lace blouse.

The temple blouses in Bali are unique. They are a derivative of the Dutch era when the women of Bali still walked around topless. The Dutch noticed that because of the topless women, more Europeans were traveling to the island. To diminish the scandalous publicity of their newly acquired island, the Dutch passed a law saying that the women had to wear at least a bra and a lace top covering themselves. Today, this lace top and bra look is reserved primarily for going to the temple and women mostly wear opaque tops during the daytime. It was definitely strange for me, as a Westerner, to walk around in public only wearing my bra and a see-through top! Luckily it was nightime.

On my return from Bali I have been trying to emulate the balance that I felt there and the balance that I perceived in the daily lives of the Balian people. However, this quote today reminded me that to be a little off-balance is O.K.

When I was wearing my temple outfit in Bali I did it because it was fun to try on a different look and to pretend for a moment that I was someone of a different culture. However, by the end of the night I was more than happy to take the outfit off. Most of the night I wished that I were in my own cloths. Dressing in someone else's garb reminded me strongly that I am not of their culture. A white person in traditional Balian dress is respected because the Balinese know that he/she is trying to be conscious of their traditions and temple rules, but it also is humorous to them. After all, Americans in general,white people in particular, blatantly do not fit in. I felt more comfortable within the Balian culture when I could embrace who I was, dress how I dress and embrace my own cultural background while still respecting and learning about people and things different than myself. I believe that the beauty is in our differences and our ability to communicate and accept one another while acknowledging these differences. I have no intention to hide who I am or where I come from.

I think it is this concept that caused me to take a picture of a stray soccer ball in a bed of flowers. They do not belong together and yet their colors and shapes create a strange harmony that is beautiful because it accents the differences.

Thoughts

Homeless in LA


Quote for today:
"When the poor come to you in great need, begging for food, do not harden your hearts against them. Remember that the poor may once have been rich, and you may one day be poor. When you see people who are thin for lack of food, beg them to accept your help; remember that you may need their friendship in times to come"
- Rig Veda.

This is perhaps one of the hardest things for me. Always having lived in a city, I shut my eyes and heart to the homeless. Personally, I do not feel that I can have enough of myself left if I give to every poor person I see and I feel that I put myself at risk if I help every schizophrenic person in the streets. But I also feel that I no longer can sit here and idly watch as our system continues abusing and neglecting this part of the population. What is to be done?

The Way Not To Get Over Jetlag

Lesson: If you want to get over jetlag I do not recommend taking another trip two days after you get home!





I took a 36hr plane ride back from Bali and arrived on Friday evening of August 18th. Then on Monday at 5am I flew to LA and flew back on Wednesday afternoon. Boston is 12hrs earlier than Bali time. This 12hr difference sometimes makes acclimation easier for me because it is such an exact opposite that it somehow is easier for my body to adjust. However, immediately traveling somewhere that is three hours earlier and then traveling back again is a jolt when I'm in the midst of adjusting to the 12 hr difference. Now I am sleeping all the time some days and awake all the time other days. My body doesn't know what time zone it is in.

I also realized that I was able to adjust to the schedule in Bali easier than the schedule in America because time makes more sense there. In Bali, you go to bed when it gets dark and you get up at 5am with the rooster that is crowing in your ear and whom you want to slaughter for dinner. In America, you are supposed to sleep more in the morning and stay up at night. Confusing! Or you don't sleep in and you still are expected to stay up at night- even more confusing. I know some people are on more "natural" cycles but I don't know of many.

One of the highlights of my trip was a conversation I had with a security guard in the JFK airport on my return. The liquids/ water bottle incident occurred while I was in Bali. We only found out about it an hour before we got on the first flight to return home. All that was told to us was that there was a scare concerning a water bomb and so now we could not bring any liquids on planes. We did not know anything else. When I arrived in the Frankfurt airport they had removed EVERY liquid substance from the whole area. Needless to say my fellow travelers and I were a bit thirsty.

Side Note: Two days ago, on the way to California, in rebellion I suppose, I snuck a water bottle onto the plane in my bag. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I didn't open it on the plane but I did bring it out at one point when the stewardess walked by and she chose to ignore it. Interesting, no? I had bought the water after I went through the security check and then when I went to get on the plane the people at the gate were only doing random checks and they didn't pick me as a threatening type of person so I went through with my bottle. I think this points out how ridiculous our system is! And I'm irked that I can't have face lotion, perfume or water when I travel because I rarely check my baggage on short trips and it is a big pain in the butt to not bring that stuff!

Anyway, when I got to JFK I asked one of the security guards for more information on the bomb threat. He was a short little man who was balding and pudgy. He replied in a VERY STRONG New York accent ,"Where ya been? Don't yous know what happened?" I obviously did not know what had happened or I would not have been asking him, but without any lip I replied that I had been in Bali, at which point he said "Wehr?" I repeated it two more times before one of my friends, who had been listening, shouted "Indonesia!" However, this did not register with the guard either so he just shrugged and then said "Well. . . don't they have TVs or radios thehr?" At this point his voice was becoming elevated. I calmly replied "No" This threw him for an even bigger loop. He looked down at the ground before replying and then he said " Well, thehr was a HUGE ordeel here involvin' watah bottles and planes and terrehrists!! They tried to ettack us and . .and. . . well, it was HUGE!!" As he reached the terrorist part of his talk he was starting to turn beet red in the face. He did not tell me anything more than anyone else had but our interaction in itself made me smile. I don't know if I can accurately convey the comical nature of this situation but by the time I got on the shuttle plane back home I was laughing to myself pretty hard.

Just his expression when I responded that I had been somewhere without TVs or American news was enough to keep me laughing for a week. Bali is a poor although developed country and they do have TVs, radios etc, but I was in a village that did not have these amenities. I wonder why it is so hard for Americans to understand a life without daily technology. It was actually really nice waking with the sun and being able to listen and sit with my thoughts while I went on a long walk in a rice paddy rather than having information fed to my brainstem by TVs and my thoughts for my day outlined by NPR.

I will post pictures and perhaps put up one or two stories about my trip to Bali soon but in the meantime I have four papers to write for school, which are due in five days. I also am feeling overwhelmed at the thought of describing my experience. I was only there two weeks and although it was a great trip it was not necessarily my most amazing trip, China and Sri Lanka still take the cake. Nevertheless, it was a deeply educational and spiritual trip for me and I feel that I grew personally and learned so much that I do not know where to begin to describe my thoughts.

Until then, hope everyone is well. I have to admit that I am very glad to be back on American soil and missed my home!
-L