Escalator which bridges 5 blocks in Hong Kong
Just 6 months ago I wrote this post about how transitions between locations almost sent me over the edge.
Now I watch myself barely flinch at Chanel bags and $20 cocktails one week, and 18 hours of blackouts and shoeless street kids the next.
I speak to one friend in Australia who just lost a job and ‘hates the job market’, and in the same day, another in Nepal who has been out of work 6 months. One who wishes there was a job market.
In Hong Kong I ride an escalator which bridges 5 blocks, in Nepal I am preparing to walk 18 hours to visit a community with no access to roads.
Recently I spent a day balancing my budget – I am $500 out over 6 months. I barely give it a second glance.
I work with women who take a loan of $350 over a year, which requires 2 visits to the branch office and the signature of a legal guardian.
I speak to my parents who complain about the difficulties of hiring a car overseas.
I look outside to see evidence of the indefinite strike here in Nepal – which in theory includes the closing of all roads for transport – over the lack of a constitution after 2 years of work.
I watch videos of the recent floods in Pokhara, and wonder whether I should change my plans to holiday there. Only to learn that one of my colleagues watched a woman out the back of his house drown in floods when he was 8 years old. She was washing her clothes. He was the one that pulled her out of the river, dead.
I am still affected by these contradictions. The world still feels like an unfair place.
But I can feel myself moving to a place of some acceptance – where the emotion subsides to a place where I am not paralysed by it and I am able to continue functioning.
I feel like I am on a bridge between worlds. I can get off the bridge in either world. But for very different reasons I don’t feel comfortable on either side.
For some reason the place I feel most comfortable is the middle – and I think I’m just starting to getting used to this bridge’s natural vibrations.
