Break? Or brake.

This post is long overdue, as are quite a few others, but it seems almost appropriate since I have been thinking a lot about time, progress, stress, and their relationship. Is it possible to only have one at the expense of another? Does progress take time? Does progress produce stress? Does stress result from lack of time? Is it just a vicious cycle that we come closer to grasping with each passing day? Clearly I still have not found an answer.

This afternoon I actually decided to stay back at the guesthouse and finish up the ESOL (English Students of Other Languages): time unit that I’ve been co-teaching with Kim Chhoeurn, the English teacher at the Amelio School. The whole unit, from brainstorming ideas to putting them on paper, from making the ideas come to life in the classroom, to ensuring their comprehension, has been more work than I anticipated. Despite my lack of time to even post a blog, I would say that it has definitely been worthwhile. It just seems funny because I don’t even remember if I’ve mentioned much about the progress the students have made in understanding time, or whether I have even mentioned the unit at all. I know I haven’t mentioned that I went to the temples with a bunch of American women from Oregon, or that I cycled to Tonle Sap lake, the largest freshwater source in southeast Asia, with an English girl also named Laura. I guess that I just haven’t had much time? So the cycle continues.

I was thinking about titling this post something like “everything I ever needed to know I learned while peddling my bike” which, in some respects, is true. Spending over an hour pedaling to and from school provides ample time to ponder, and while that seems obvious, having time to think through things is a luxury for me. I simply don’t have the time. School makes it at least appears that way because I struggle to find the time to get more than four hours of sleep each night. It seems ironic that I would be able to do the least amount of thinking while attending university. School. You know, the institution where you’re supposed to expand your mind through thinking? Thank goodness for summer break… a time to think things through. I’ve thought so much about things here in Siem Reap that I actually planned out this entry on the back of the envelope I received containing the receipt for extended visa. I may have written the rough outline almost five days ago, but I simply haven’t had a break to expand on those ideas that cover the envelope I have next to me.

Going back to the importance of the bike, I was taken aback the other day while I was riding home for lunch. Just a few hundred meters from the gate of the Amelio School, near to the divot where I had the mud bath, stood ten children on the side of the road. I couldn’t figure out why they were just standing there; the students are usually like horses through the gate at the start of a race when school is out. When I stopped to survey the situation, I noticed they were having some trouble with their means of transportation: bicycles. In my twenty-one years of life, I have waited for car batteries to be jumped, I have been on airplanes that have needed a few repairs before takeoff, I have waited hours for buses, and I have sat in construction for six hours while twelve men patched up six small patches of road. I have even been on trains that couldn’t move forward because of protesting students sitting on the tracks. Never, however, in all of my years of getting around or being held up, have I experienced a broken-down bike.

On this particular Thursday the chains of two students’ bikes had come off, most likely while they were traversing the divots in the dirt road created from heavy traffic flow (read: the occasional car) after torrential rains. It is, after all, the rainy season. These “potholes” are so big they span portions of road so large that they make Pennsylvania roads look like they were paved smooth out of ice by a zamboni, not out of asphalt by PennDOT. These holes are some serious holes, and if you sneeze when you’re steering clear you might as well take a bath in the mud. If not you might also consider being stranded on the side of the road, broken-down on your bicycle because the chain has come off of the track. While putting chains back onto bikes doesn’t require a certified mechanic, the situation of these two students came close. The porous terrain left the students’ bikes in such shape that the chains wedged themselves between the spokes and the gauges, but the chains were not simply stuck. They wouldn’t budge. Not with yanks, pulls, sticks, bricks, wires or axes. While I mentioned that I haven’t had much time lately, I decided to make time for these students having two-wheel troubles. Even if I wasn’t the one with the solution, the wrench, I felt that moral support was more important than getting back into the air-con for lunch. Forty minutes later I took the opportunity to positively contributed to the situation by handing out handy wipes for all involved: grease-free fingers and good habits just in time for lunch.

It wasn’t until later that day that I really thought about the significance of the broken down bikes, after Kim Chhoeurn asked me about the word “break.” While I explained the situation, she asked for clarification on the word break. Could I spell it? I replied by writing it on the white board in front of us. Break: b, r, e, a, k. As I spelled the word out on the white board I remembered that there is another word that sounds the same but is spelled differently: brake. Same same sound, but different meaning. A break is like a pause, and a brake is something that stops suddenly. Only on my way home, thinking about the day’s events, did I realize this coincidence that is the homonym break/brake.

Both break and brake seem to involve a stop or a pause of some sort. A break can be a pause from work, from school, or even a stop from something like bad luck in the sense of a lucky break. It can also be used in the sense of “breaking a bone;” perhaps that could be considered a pause in the bone’s continuity. It will be back together some day, but for now, the bone is broken: the continuity is paused. Brake, like break, has to do with a pause, but in a more abrupt sense. When you use your brakes, you might think of slamming them for an immediate stop. Brakes halt motion suddenly.

I am still sorting through the meanings and significance of this little homonymic coincidence. Although, it seems as though life happens, at least when things start to get busy and stress rears its’ ugly head, because of a series of brakes. Without the sudden halts we make to achieve certain things or deal with others, it is possible that we would keep on going, no stops, forever. Stressed, with no time, and absolutely no breaks until a brake. A forced stop. And while that might be fulfilling in the sense of making progress, does this type of lifestyle produce stress? And when is the stress worth it? Is it possible to take a break before you have to slam on the brakes?

I know that my 40-minute break for roadside bike assistance certainly helped me to think through some things, particularly regarding time and how sometimes schedules must be fluid instead of crystallized. While I slammed on my brakes to pause and scope out the scene, I decided to take a break from my preconceived schedule and offer a hand of support; I allowed my schedule, and my life, for that morning to be more fluid. I had more options. If I hadn’t put on the brakes and stuck to the rigid schedule I have fallen into, I would have never taken a break to offer any roadside assistance… but should it be that way? Should we create such schedules that force us to resent slamming on the brakes rather than enjoy the breaks, no matter what the circumstance like helping out someone in a bind, or in this case a serious wedge? If I ever figure this one out, I’ll be sure to make the time for a break to pass along my findings. I just hope that I don’t have to slam on my brakes first.