I continue on with my rendition of ‘slice of life’ – where I was, how I was feeling, and what I was doing on the first day of this year.
January 1, 2020
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
After six months of domestic roatripping, I find myself more than 10,000 miles away from my home country, in a different hemisphere, stepping into this new month, new year and even new decade!
At the moment the calendar flips from 12/31/2019 to 1/1/2020, I’m on the deck at Harmony Villas with Darralene, my dear friend of more than 25 years who said “yes” to flying to the other side of the world to join me! Incredulous to be here, so far removed from our familiar suburban life togher, the fireworks lighting the sky over the rice fields, we shake our heads, clink our glasses…..AMAZED.*
Finally, I crawl into my netted bed and sleep deeply.
When I wake, still, with the rice fields in my view, now lit by the morning light – lush, multitude of greens under the tropical sky.
My first conscious thought felt as though it was impatiently waiting for me to awake. It was so vivid that I rolled over and fumbled for my pen & journal, and wrote “Whatever we do, let it change us“. It wasn’t quite audible, but it was precise, unmistakable and explicitly presented to me. This is what followed, stream of consciousness, unedited, transposed from my journal:
Whatever we do let it change us. And thus – my first thought on my first awake in the new year and decade and adventure in 2020.
As I awake in my netted nest and see what is before me I know that when I land back home I will be changed from who I was on that day in July – just last July. If someone told me this back then, I couldn’t have argued – it would be something I would have believed but didn’t know or feel. Today – I feel it, I know it, I see it, and have just enough understanding to know what to look for as I go into this day, year, experience.
I am blessed to know this because of the immense experience of my travels across our country and now embarking into something completely new and undiscovered in Bali.
But the importance, significance in this is that I understand that this truth permeates into EVERYTHING we do. The word is WHATEVER. That means – everything. Big adventures – yes. And going to work, the grocery store, rocking a baby, petting a cat, walking on the beach or city street or in the neighborhood. WHATEVER. EVERYTHING.
This message is for me and it’s for me to exhort effectively. Is it our responsibility to become?
Case in point – make friends with the critters here. No fear or disdain for the giant cockroach, no flicking away the tiny spider that’s crawling around the page here, or on my knuckle, or the giant geckos on the ceiling. Keep the mosquitos at bay, but respect them. They are here. This translates to all things/situations/people that cause us discomfort.
My quiet was soon delightfully, unexpectedly interrupted by the sudden appearance of a dog in my bed! This is how I met Trixie, the Harmony Villa resident who let herself in through the front door to introduce herself. Trixie would be one of the highlights of our morning routine during our stay at the villa. Isn’t she adorable?!
Eventually I climbed out of bed to join Darralene for our first Bali breakfast, prepared and delivered by Ibu, our house manager. Ibu would become our cook, transportation, personal guide, teacher and ultimately, friend over the next two weeks.
After breakfast we unpacked then ventured out along the busy sidewalk-less street into town, about a 30 minute walk, taking in the new sites, sounds, smells of this foreign place.
After much wandering we got lost in conversation over a long, unhurried meal when we suddenly remembered that we had scheduled massages at our villa in less than 30 minutes! I messaged Ibu to ask her to move our appointments, but instead, she suggested that she and her husband come pick us up to get us back in time. Relieved and grateful, we waited for them in front of the restaurant. But when we saw them ride up on scooters, we were speechless! Throughout this first day here, we’d been observing the way the countless, perpetual scooters moved through the streets, appearing to us to be utterly chaotic and terrifying, and vowed that we would never be in that midst. But here we were pretty much trapped into breaking our vehement vows that were made just hours before. Darralene and I looked at each other, wide eyed, and quickly rattled off justifications of how to get ourselves to hop on the back of these 2 scooters as Ibu and her husband waited. It went something like this: a)they went to the trouble to come into town to get us, b)we decided that they had to be trusted to not put us in harms way, and c)we really wanted those massages! On we hopped, and off we went. Oh, how exhilarating to feel so brave and safe and free in this unfamiliar city, and as we weaved in and around the heavy traffic I just beamed.
We arrived back at the villa in time to take some breaths, settle down, and relax into our first Bali massages. Now, at the end of this day, as surreal as it felt, I knew I had fully arrived and this indeed was very real. I reveled in the vision that Bali welcomed and awaited me with a whole month of brand new experiences, and smiled into the mixture of this thought and the physical sensation of the hands on my back.
*HAPPY NEW YEAR! HAPPY NEW YEAR??? I think about this ritualistic sentiment and what we all anticipate in that moment as we cheer and hug and kiss in CELEBRATION of the hope in a new year. Today, we can all agree that “happy” turns out to be a most ridiculous descriptor for 2020!
