There are three seasons in Thailand, I’m told: hot, hotter, and hottest. I was there for hotter, the summer of 2009, to help teach English, orient volunteers, and be of service to the mission board in many and various impromptu ways.
As part of my regular schedule, certain mornings I took a canal boat from the guesthouse I was staying in to the end of its line near some giant malls and the market where the class was held. Each afternoon I returned by the Skytrain, a much simpler way.
At some wise point, I decided that I had ridden the canal boat (often as the only Westerner) enough times that I could probably figure out how to take it home, and if I missed my stop, I could easily walk from a few stops away.
Well, I missed my stop and I missed it good. Then then canal turned, and it felt like a long ride, but they only stop if you are standing up ready to get off. And it’s hard to stand up ready if you can’t even tell where you are. And it’s hard to tell where you are when a plastic tarp is pulled up two thirds of the way from the floor to the roof to prevent the canal water from splashing you in the face.
I finally got off the boat somewhere (you just have to hand them enough cash to cover and trust them to give you the correct change because you don’t speak Thai) and began walking. This was a section of Bangkok I had never been to. I was used to bilingual street signs, and these were only in Thai. There weren’t many people around, but those who were gave me that what-is-that-farang-doing-here?-look. (Farang is a Thai slang word for white person; it’s also the word for guava—which is sometimes white inside.)
This is what lost feels like.
I knew that at any point, I could easily call a cab and return home (if I could remember how to tell them how to get me home). But I thought that something would look familiar soon and I could get there myself by some slightly less defeatist mode of transportation. Eventually, I was walking along the shoulder of what was, essentially, a five-lane freeway. It didn’t seem like a great idea, but you also can’t exactly call a cab in this environment, if you even saw a cab to hail.
I eventually found a side road where I could flag down a red taxi just as it began to rain. “Bai Sukhumvit soi sip-sam,” I was able to tell him my address in Thai because I was reminded of the word for ‘13’ just that morning in English class. It took longer than thirty minutes to get home.
I didn’t panic because I always had the taxi back up plan (and Thailand, thankfully, has a very low violent crime rate). But there is no telling what that driver thought of me. Thailand was an adventure in transportation: tuk-tuks, taxis, Skytrain, city buses, canal boats (in the “Venice of the East!”), pickup trucks with seats in the back that seem mostly legit. It was less a question of if I’d get back and mostly a question of how and when.
This could be a metaphor for life.
But it probably isn’t.
It’s probably just the most exotic and least anxious case of lostness I’ve experienced.
Most days I don’t feel lost—I usually remember where I am when my alarm shocks me out of a death-sleep, get to work on time by the same route each day, and spend my evenings in the same coffee shops or with the same friends, the regularity of which lends a bit of comfort, the calm in a slow-moving existential drift of uncertainty.
There are times of silence, though,—or of escapism brought on by struggle—when I begin to feel that heaviness of dread, of uncertainty, of maybe I’m not where—or who—I’m meant to be or need to be or want to be. Some days I feel lost in life and jealous of people strutting down the middle of the road like the world is their oyster and they’ve got the map memorized.
Maybe life is just supposed to be like that—like we’re walking down a strange road with cars flying by and no idea what country we’re in until, suddenly, the landscape looks familiar and we realize we’re home.
To be at a loss may be more locative that I realized. Lost in my own skin, it feels, in my own mind, and my lungs squeeze together and my chest caves in.
And maybe the weight of not-quite-rightness is supposed to stay with us for a while. If you have to lose your life to save it, do you have to lose your way to find it?
As part of my regular schedule, certain mornings I took a canal boat from the guesthouse I was staying in to the end of its line near some giant malls and the market where the class was held. Each afternoon I returned by the Skytrain, a much simpler way.
At some wise point, I decided that I had ridden the canal boat (often as the only Westerner) enough times that I could probably figure out how to take it home, and if I missed my stop, I could easily walk from a few stops away.
Well, I missed my stop and I missed it good. Then then canal turned, and it felt like a long ride, but they only stop if you are standing up ready to get off. And it’s hard to stand up ready if you can’t even tell where you are. And it’s hard to tell where you are when a plastic tarp is pulled up two thirds of the way from the floor to the roof to prevent the canal water from splashing you in the face.
I finally got off the boat somewhere (you just have to hand them enough cash to cover and trust them to give you the correct change because you don’t speak Thai) and began walking. This was a section of Bangkok I had never been to. I was used to bilingual street signs, and these were only in Thai. There weren’t many people around, but those who were gave me that what-is-that-farang-doing-here?-look. (Farang is a Thai slang word for white person; it’s also the word for guava—which is sometimes white inside.)
This is what lost feels like.
I knew that at any point, I could easily call a cab and return home (if I could remember how to tell them how to get me home). But I thought that something would look familiar soon and I could get there myself by some slightly less defeatist mode of transportation. Eventually, I was walking along the shoulder of what was, essentially, a five-lane freeway. It didn’t seem like a great idea, but you also can’t exactly call a cab in this environment, if you even saw a cab to hail.
I eventually found a side road where I could flag down a red taxi just as it began to rain. “Bai Sukhumvit soi sip-sam,” I was able to tell him my address in Thai because I was reminded of the word for ‘13’ just that morning in English class. It took longer than thirty minutes to get home.
I didn’t panic because I always had the taxi back up plan (and Thailand, thankfully, has a very low violent crime rate). But there is no telling what that driver thought of me. Thailand was an adventure in transportation: tuk-tuks, taxis, Skytrain, city buses, canal boats (in the “Venice of the East!”), pickup trucks with seats in the back that seem mostly legit. It was less a question of if I’d get back and mostly a question of how and when.
This could be a metaphor for life.
But it probably isn’t.
It’s probably just the most exotic and least anxious case of lostness I’ve experienced.
Most days I don’t feel lost—I usually remember where I am when my alarm shocks me out of a death-sleep, get to work on time by the same route each day, and spend my evenings in the same coffee shops or with the same friends, the regularity of which lends a bit of comfort, the calm in a slow-moving existential drift of uncertainty.
There are times of silence, though,—or of escapism brought on by struggle—when I begin to feel that heaviness of dread, of uncertainty, of maybe I’m not where—or who—I’m meant to be or need to be or want to be. Some days I feel lost in life and jealous of people strutting down the middle of the road like the world is their oyster and they’ve got the map memorized.
Maybe life is just supposed to be like that—like we’re walking down a strange road with cars flying by and no idea what country we’re in until, suddenly, the landscape looks familiar and we realize we’re home.
To be at a loss may be more locative that I realized. Lost in my own skin, it feels, in my own mind, and my lungs squeeze together and my chest caves in.
And maybe the weight of not-quite-rightness is supposed to stay with us for a while. If you have to lose your life to save it, do you have to lose your way to find it?