I'm only about two years in and still feeling
,
, and
most of the time, but I also - frequently - lose patience with *China* ...
Feelings of
,
,
,
,
,
, and
do strike - sometimes in pairs and small groups!
I tend to think that's more about me than whatever *China* *does* that I'm spitting about. I suppose most humans do to some extant, but I too frequently struggle with patience in the face of that stream of daily bullshit that can't be avoided unless one stays in bed.
I'm hoping that, more often than not, I'll learn to let small things slide - that I'll know those things when I see them and just smile quietly instead - and if that happens, I'll have China to thank for it. I imagine a greater capacity to be at ease and relief from the weight of expectations about how things ought to flow, because even now I well know how futile that shit is, begging the question why am I still such a high-strung, off-key piano wire?
Maybe I'll finally master that Jedi ability to experience feelings without always identifying with them ... zen and the art of ... teaching English in China?
I don't mean that there aren't plenty of legitimate gripes that arise, not to mention really serious WTF matters of regular course that limit people here in ways they can't walk away from - there are. Just as there are far, far away in the benighted land of Kanuckistan. There, as here, I find the mindset that prefers living with steaming piles of senseless incompetence, petty corruption, mean spirited ideologues and their fuckery to the necessity of confronting it/them/that out loud if we ever want consistent progress towards life with less of that garbage -
- challenging to my peace of mind. There, not here, that kind of confrontation is so much less costly; the right to engage in it still exists though defense of it and protections for it erode daily... such that I find the unwillingness to get REAL that is so pervasive back 'home'
hard to accept at all...
...
This train of thought is a frequent ride for many of us, isn't it?
So we think about our here's and there's and ask ourselves why we are here or there or somewhere inbetween ...
...now all this thinking out loud has me thinking I should take a walk.