Expectations

The intention of this blog was to be about emotions, and our exploration of them. Maybe we jinxed that because this trip has almost consisted of hardly anything else. Among rats in our rooms, miscommunications between Thai and English, taking advantage of weary travelers with overpriced transportation services, little national park visiting, even smaller amounts of life searching and more, Dan and I have also been dealing with the fact that we have hardly had a meal away from each in the past 7 weeks. We have had little time to really have the downtime to ourselves in between traveling to a new town, finding a place, venturing to the market for lunch or dinner, find a place with wifi and the right outlet so we can search for a guesthouse at our next destination, and further on. 

            It is wildly exhausting emotionally. Dan and I have each seen parts of one another that no one else has.

            At the right times though we are reminded of the beauty here. The orange of the monks’ robes, the soft teal of the ocean, the “Hellos” from strangers just to speak with us and help us find our destination without the intent of pushing us to a pricey tuk-tuk, the candlelit dinner by the water, and the one extra day on an island without mainland in sight to relax and let our bodies heal. And the food has made neither of us sick this whole time.

My mind races with too many things that pertain to back home. I came here to open my mind and to find inner peace. Earlier this year I made a vow to seek spiritual growth. Little have I accomplished. I found most of my mind broken away from fetters yesterday while snorkeling. “Just focus on deep breaths and watch arrays of color swim around you.” This acted as my mantra. Ko Lipe (our island we are now) was never in my itinerary. Tarutao, its protected big brother that can be seen in the distance, however was on my list. Being the low season it is closed and touristy Ko Lipe took us in on a popping speedboat in a series of apexes and deep nadirs that knocked us about in laughter.

In the end I realize that I have expected a lot from this trip. Resulted from this is disappointment. City hopping is not what I dreamt of when I thought about Thailand. I would have rather spent the past 4 weeks in one place with some kind of purpose. But that is not what happened and cannot be changed.

Expectations. In my Tao Te Ching book there is a poem that states a sage, “Acts without expectation.” She acts instead with “wu-wei”, a form of unattached action and allows for things to happen naturally, at their own free will. This mindset is much harder to achieve than I expected it to be.

Oh, how I will miss the puttering farts of the long-tail boats.