‘Hm’, I said, not meaning for it to be such a short sharp expression of a somewhat surprising realisation. I often disappear into my thoughts; occasionally I get jolted back with the realisation that I have spoken something—usually a question—out loud. Today, sitting in an armchair in the library of Kopan Monastery where I am staying for a week, I found myself unwittingly tapping on my phone, writing about death. The subject had been discussed in the earlier dharma talk and, on entering the library, my eyes and hands thankfully landed immediately on The Book of Joy by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I tend to experience excessive overwhelm when choosing a book in a library or bookstore and often the doors have closed while I am still drifting trance-like up and down aisles, touching and leafing through—and often sniffing—hundreds of books I fail to narrow down to just that one. It seems unjust somehow to eliminate so much unread potential with the accumulated value of hundreds of thousands of writing hours by hopeful authors. This is why ‘thankfully’ interjected there. As it happens, I read very little of the joy book. Surrounded by all those words and wisdom, a quite typical Penelope thought crossed my mind: I am more afraid of my luggage not appearing on the airport carousal than I am of dying.
I decided to unpack that—so to speak—in light of my current day of drifting in and out of sleep; my previous few days of stiffness in my knuckles, forearms and upper back; general tension and weakness in my body, and an incapacity to fully function. The now almost fully-healed wound on my right arm reminds me of the potential cause of these symptoms: a dog bite a week ago in Pharping Dollu.
We are all on the limen of life and death and not one of us knows exactly when we will unwittingly cross. Yet cross we will. So, when the darkness beckons, I submit. Sometimes I go so deep into the dark without a flashlight and, to the alarm of many, I’m not afraid of staying there a while. And then I write and I share. But no one wants to hear these travel stories. People want to live vicariously … they want to suck the dopamine hits from my days on the road. They want romance stories not murder mysteries; they want beaches and sunsets, not oil slicks and smog. People want to be wooed by their projected fantasies onto the ones who leave; unwilling or unable to live their dreams into existence.
I have so often been dangerously and excitingly close to crossing that limen between life and death that I can freely claim to have intentionally dangled a foot over the threshold on more than one occasion. This time, however, I had to weigh up the risks of taking my chances dying from a disease I had a minuscule chance of contracting or getting a vaccine and risking injury or death from a medicine I had a minuscule chance of needing. Either way I might die and I had 24 hours to choose which death risk I was willing to take. Those hours felt like a hike through hell as I had to not only consider my choice to vaccinate or not but also navigate my unfamiliar discomfort with death standing vigil at the foot of my bed.
Every breakthrough is accompanied by a fever.
I awoke from a torrid night with the absolute surrender to my mortality and my autonomy in taking my chances crossing the threshold potentially whilst still exploring Nepal. Life, after all is only a practice and death is inevitable … and if this is my destiny then my freedom to choose this was also pre-determined.
Like the luggage on the carousel, I recognise that suffering is in the anticipation only; the struggle and the resistance. It lies in the attachment. Some have suffering imposed on them and some get stuck in adversity as though an addiction whilst others embrace it out of fear of who they would need to be if freedom was their new reality. Still there are others who never experience suffering and adversity and always seek an elusive freedom as a fish seeks the water it swims in.
The weight on the airport scales is nothing compared with what I drag onto planes … the emotional baggage; the leaden soul. Dark nights and prolonged depressions are also travel. Longterm nomading has nothing to do with escaping anything and everything to do with facing everything … in ever-changing landscapes that highlight the myriad crises and give endless space to tease them apart … to sometimes break them open … to make space enough to step back, get perspective and rebuild with breathing space. Because nothing can be escaped. All I can do is express how it actually feels, not how I want it to feel. And not how vicarious travellers want to experience it either.
So I travel to recover and heal from a lifetime of living in survival mode, decades of abuse, breakdowns and mental afflictions such as narcolepsy, ADHD and autism. I travel to break down the walls of the necessity to function according to other people’s perceptions and expectations so that I can transmute and transmit my light through the cracks in the dark matter of dis-ease, dis-function and dis-order. I travel to free myself from the here or there or now or then; to find the moments of existence that contain everything and nothing. Because true freedom can only be found through the gateways. I travel to practice living well so that I can die well.
Death still lingers as aches and pains as I face up to where I am in its liminal space. As I stand at the carousel of life and luggage, I none the less give the three black monastery dogs an uncharacteristic wide berth as I walk to the Gompa. Just becasue I am questioning the power of my mind to slip either into healing or suffering and how prepared I am to cross the threshold does not mean I actually want to die just yet.
I travel to question my questions so that I may never find the answers.
WELL WORTH BEING 