Everything Happens for a Reason

There seem to be infinite ways of making sense of the world: religion, theories, laws, formulas, love, karma, yin and yang, faith, traditions, knowledge, wives tales, predestination, reincarnation, evolution, what goes around comes around. It’s almost overwhelming to conceptualize even an abbreviated list. When I was growing up I made sense of the world through the traditions and beliefs of my family, largely based upon Catholic teachings. While I still consider myself of Catholic faith, I’m at that point in my life where I need to find my own answers to the fundamental questions that lie at the core of personhood: who am I and what do I stand for? I know that the things I am seeing and experiencing with every waking moment here are helping me to answer these questions, although I’ve only been able to affirm one mantra thus far: everything happens for a reason.

Does everything happen for a reason? It certainly can seem that way when luck is on your side, when the chips fall into place, or even when things are smooth sailing. But what about the occasions when things are so-so, not-so-good, or downright bad? Those things certainly don’t happen for a reason, do they? Why would suffering or pain happen on purpose? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but even when the going gets tough, I truly do believe that the things that we experience, whether or not they happen out of chance or luck or design by a higher Being, they happen for a reason. Only when the door in front closes can the pale light from another room down the hall be noticed.

I can’t say that there’s one exact experience that has lead me to believe that everything happens for a reason because I know that it’s a cocktail of the good and the not-so-good. I would be lying if I said that none of it was a challenge to get through and I never questioned my own mantra, but I do know that it makes me who and what I am. If I could go back in time I don’t think I would change anything that has happened because then I wouldn’t be myself. One of the not-so-great, makes-you-a-little-doubtful experiences came and went quickly just last week here in Siem Reap. Last Tuesday morning at school I was more tired than usual because my neck had been sore the night before and had kept me awake for some of the night. I also had a large, swollen bug bite on my arm that did not quell from the usual Benadryl itch stick. When my right eyelid started to swell rapidly around 10 am, I became unnerved and decided to take the rest of the day off. After some coaxing from a concerned friend I decided to call my supervisor and see the doctor, an activity that I dread even in the States.

Within 48 hours my eyelid was back to normal, the soreness in my neck was gone, and the bite looked like an average mosquito’s feast. The doctor attributed the whole situation to an allergic reaction of some kind, and prescribed anti-inflammatory and anti-allergy medications, which I started taking the very same afternoon my eyelid, had swelled. While the swollen eyelid, swollen gland, and swollen bite did not prove to be life threatening, I guess that one can never be too careful here because you run the risk of “Cambodia catching up to you.” I do not know if this “situation” was so not-so-good that it forced me to question the validity of my mantra, although it’s not something that I would choose to occur on a regular basis, neither here nor in the States. Looking back on the whole incident a week later, I have a good idea why the reaction and subsequent scare happened, and as a result I’ve been able to learn from it. I can’t let my guard down, and I need to make sure that I’m taking care of myself: physically and mentally. While it was a nuisance and proved a bit of a temporary scare, that little allergic reaction happened for a reason, and those few swollen bumps helped to affirm my mantra in the end. However, something even that small has the potential to detract from such a belief, particularly while they are occurring. I certainly didn’t feel the situation affirmed my belief until I was healed.

And while little things like that can initially create doubt and skepticism, some things that happen are so powerful that they come close to shattering even shadows of doubt that things do happen for a reason. All of my doubts were nearly shattered just over a week ago when I ran into a group of women whom I now refer to as my adoptive Oregonian aunties. Their names are Shari, Jill, Marylou, Alice, Susan, and Dorothy; they were all from Oregon and were in Cambodia working through Women of Vision, part of the World Vision organization. By chance, or perhaps by the design of a higher Being, they were staying at the Villa, my guesthouse here in Siem Reap. They happened to be checking in while I was coming home for lunch on Saturday. Hearing American English and seeing US addresses on their luggage in the lobby prompted me to inquire where they were from. I didn’t think that much would come of the question beyond my standard “oh, I’m from Pennsylvania” response and the faint chorus of “It’s a Small World After All” playing in my head. Truth be told, I could not have been more wrong; the moment that Shari and I began speaking in the lobby, my weekend plans were transformed, as was my take on the Khmer culture and its’ rich history.

The six Oregonian women welcomed me into their group with open arms, and asked me to spend lunch with them before heading back to school for the afternoon session that Saturday. They also invited me to venture with them to the temples the next day, which I had yet to see. I cannot thank them enough for their openness, their friendship, or their interest in not only in my work with CFC, but in me as a twenty-something girl spending seven weeks alone in Cambodia. Not only did I enjoy a refreshing banana smoothie over lunch while listening to a sampling of their amazing stories, but I gained their friendship, which in turn enabled me to share with them the awe-inspiring experience of the Angkor temples.

After taking in the aura of the temples of Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, and the Bayon, I can understand why people travel from the opposite ends of the Earth to see such wonders of the world. These temples were built almost a millennium ago at the heart of the Khmer empire’s capital. Think of DC only a thousand years ago. Also consider that such marvels were constructed in old-fashioned ways; these structures were not built with cranes and cement, but by systems devised using elephants, the current of the river, and interlocking pieces. Even after four years of utter cultural and historical destruction the temples that surround Siem Reap cannot be described in any other way except indescribable. They’re just one of those things that you need to see to believe they even exist in such awe-inspiring form. Their sheer existence after all of the time that has passed and all of the events that have occurred in this world of ours epitomizes the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Not only was my temple experience magical to say the least, but it was something unforgettable because of the company that I shared it with. Jill, Susan, and I climbed the steep steps “towards heaven” of one of the temples close to Ta Prohm, along with Brett, Shari’s 18-year-old stepson who had been brave enough to travel with six women for a few weeks. The eight of us arose at 4:30 in the morning to see the temples at sunrise, and we watched the sunset in the sky while sharing dinner and one another’s company over an exquisite dinner at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. We even had some laughs and good fun while bargaining at the night market, chatting away with some of the stall owners, and doing some shopping at the Artisans of Angkor workshop, before toasting to our acquaintance with one last beer on Pub Street. They left the next day, Monday morning, while I was still at school. Although they were exhausted from their travels, they all made it down to breakfast so that they might wish me well and thank me for a wonderful time in Siem Reap.

I still do not know the significance of our meeting, me and my six adoptive aunties and adopted cousin. Perhaps we crossed paths to share in the wonders of Angkor, creating memories that I doubt I will forget for many years to come? Or perhaps our meeting was more than an amazing day-and-a-half in Siem Reap? The answers to these questions will only come with time. For now all that I can know for certain is that everything happens for a reason, including surprise visits from six aunties that I never knew I had.

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.