Wednesday, January 30, 2008

In the Krabi airport

I'm writing you all from the Krabi airport, another strange reminder of the connectedness of the electronic world.

The airport waiting lounge is a great microcosmic experience of Thailand, full of beach bums, honeymooners, monks, muslim clerics, vacationing missionaries and burned out hippies, not to mention the omnipresent Thai people who simultaneously make our presence possible and try to make some sort of living by letting us pretend our lives would be somehow different if we lived here instead of back home.

Philosophically, of course, we all know that life would be the same here... that all the pettiness and complexities of life would catch up with us here rather than loitering back home, smoking cigarettes on our front porches. But emotionally we think that maybe, somehow, this time we can outrun all our problems, that we won't load them up like the seventeen pieces of luggage we brought with us, that this time we can make a clean break and live a life of abundance and joy without questions or worries.

The problem being that all these things, we carry them around like tattoos. We can't escape them any more than we could escape our skin, or breathing, or the sky. And the remedy, well, He's as present (more so) than our problems... at home, in Thailand or India or Lithuania or Croatia or Russia or any other place you could name (or can't name).

Tomorrow is our last full day in Thailand... in Bangkok. As much as I'd like it to be otherwise it feels more like a stop on the journey home than another day of vacation. But so be it. Home needs tending and there are things and people there I wouldn't trade just for beaches and swimming pools. Although, if they wanted to join us here, I might be persuaded....

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