The Real World

I’ve been back from holiday for a week now and more than 8 people have said to me, “welcome back to the real world!”  I know that the intention is good and this is a an acknowledgement that I was in another kind of reality for the last month but these words have been echoing in my head since thier first utterance.  The real world?  Is that where my life is located?  What does that say for the billions – yes, billions – of people located all over the Earth that have a reality different than mine?  A world where water is still the primary concern followed shortly by shelter, food and community?  Is that not the real world?  I would make the argument that this holiday I had, this vacation, was into the real world and not the opposite.

Getting Water

Only 5 days into my normal routine and I can’t shake the fact that everything I’m doing is somehow floating above the surface, mired in an ocean of static and electricity, the tasks are like turning the gears of a clock in a world with no time.  I am making and writing and shifting and doing all with the purpose of being able to do the same thing tomorrow.  Like the Doozer’s living in Fraggle Rock, I am building things simply for the sake of building them.  Need is irrelevant.  Good design is optional.  Cooperation is a luxury.  The Western way, the capitalist way, isn’t as concerned with the output as the money made from the output and I can’t understand why I have always been okay with this relationship.  I haven’t just been okay with it but have educated myself to maximize it and, with it, my own personal benefits.   

Skin - All They Have To Sell

I refer to myself as Sisyphus all the time, the 21st century variety, and that is true but if I recall the story correctly Sisyphus was in hell.  I am not.  Or at least, I would like to choose an alternative.  It took a journey to the East to gain some perspective on the West and now I am grappling with that new view.  Don’t get me wrong, I like comfort and am deeply grateful for the gifts and luck I have had that allows me to live the life I am living but I am seeing something else now…life with purpose, concern for the output rather than the money made from it and comfort are not mutually exclusive.  It is possible to take the same skills and same passions I use for perpetuating the daily grind to turn the gears of a different machine…one that impacts the ‘real world’ in a ‘real way.’

Sisters - UB Girls in the Country

Since my return I have been combing through my images, watching zillions of TED presentations, looking in the mirror and asking myself some very clear questions.  I am full to the brim, overflowing in fact, with inspiration and I am considering carefully where to direct this new passion and energy so as to help reconnect me with the ‘real world’ and also maintain the flexible freedom that I have worked hard to achieve.  A garden would be a simple beginning – reconnecting literally with where my food comes from – while the opposite end of the specturm would be dropping everything and heading to Africa to dig wells.  As you can see, it is a big arc that I am mentally traversing and I am curious to see where on it I will land.

The honest truth is that I don’t know yet how, and how much, I want to change or how radical that change should be but I can say that the thought is pumping through me like my blood.   

3rd Day Horse Trek - Beana in Central Mongolia