Day Five Hundred & Ninety-four

Day Five Hundred & Ninety-four
Friday, January 20th 2012

I had my interview for the Peace Corps Fellows sociology program at ISU last night on the phone at 10PM Mongolia time, 8AM American central standard time. Some of the questions certainly caught me off guard a little bit. I was asked to provide examples of when I had troubles with a past co-worker or boss & how I resolved them, instances of my own independent initiative, talk about where I see myself in ten years, & other things along a similar vein. I gave it the absolute best I could (despite the fact the the electricity went out not halfway into the interview – I had candles & a lighter close by & on-hand – & despite the fact that in order to get somewhat steady cell phone reception, I am often relegated to standing on a chair perched near my window). There is nothing left for me to do by wait until the end of March for a decision to be made.

The interviewer (an RPCV from Bulgaria who also went through the Peace Corps Fellows sociology program at ISU with a research interest into women's issues) did mention to me that since I have never taken an economics course, that I will need to make up this deficit before classes start at ISU in August. This essentially means that I will be taking an online economics course through Harper, & ideally, I would like to do so from Mongolia if I can manage it. A lot of puzzle pieces must fall into place over the next few days, & I have been contacting various parties for information.

I started re-watching Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman last night, since I brought the digitized first two seasons with me here to Mongolia on my hard drive. (Those who know me & who know me well are aware that I own all six seasons in boxed sets on DVD at home in America.) Starting from the very first episode of the very first season, I was suddenly struck by how very much like Dr. Quinn I now am. Funny, because I can remember idolizing her since I was a child, at least since second or third grade. When my dad first introduced me to the wonders of thrift stores around that time, I would even buy long skirts & button-down shirts (for the cost of a mere few dollars) to wear. I had a little bag that I would carry onto the playground which contained band-aids & hand sanitizer in case of any jungle gym emergencies.

How truly like her I turned out to be. Like the beloved Dr. Mike, I moved away from the creature comforts of home (in her case, Boston, where her wealthy family had servants & even plumbing) to a distant land without running water or electricity (let's be fair, it's been off for at least 50%, but most likely more, of my service here). Unlike Dr. Mike, I didn't befriend a woman named Charlotte with three kids, so luckily, I haven't been landed with budding young 'uns after Charlotte went & got herself bit by a rattlesnake. However, the similarities are more than a little striking. Sure, I don't wear petticoats, sure, I don't have the beautiful Colorado scenery around me, & sure, Joe Lando, the eye-candy who plays the character Byron Sully, isn't hanging around for the opportunity to woo me off my feet (sadly), but in my adulthood, I see where my tendencies come from. My friends tell me that I'm the type of person who wears her heart on her sleeve. If I disagree with something, people know. If I find an issue morally questionable, I am not afraid to speak up. I am who I am, unabashedly so, & I am comfortable with that. If Michaela Quinn had ever really existed, I would have been her in a past life. (Trivia: Did you know that Jane Seymour was forty-two years old when Dr. Quinn first aired, despite the fact that she looks little older than half that age? Did you know that she turns sixty-one on February 15th of this year? Did you know that Jane Seymour's real birthday & Dr. Quinn's fictional birthday are one & in the same?)

I have begun to discover a sense balance with my last several months as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Though my heart yearns to count down, & though I shiver relentlessly when the power goes out & Chicago & I seek shelter in my sleeping bag (he mewed balefully last night as we huddled together for warmth), it has occurred to me that I should try my best to relish the time I have left. Part of this realization comes from a Buddhist teaching by Achaan Chah. He advises “Just go into the room & put one chair in the center. Take the one seat in the center of the room, open the doors & windows, & see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes & actors, all kinds of temptations & stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise & pass, & out of this, wisdom & understanding will come.”

In Mongolia, taking the one seat brings me a life full of visitors & curiosity, it means that people try much harder to understand me & to be understood by me, it includes the love of children who give me their kindness & adoration out of the purity of their own hearts. My life here is one such that I am special, perhaps still somewhat an oddity, but I have been accepted wholeheartedly by my community. There is scarcely an inhabitant of my village who doesn't know my name, though I sadly do not know many of theirs. From my experiences in the one seat I have taken in the past in America, I now find myself fearing loneliness upon my return.

To quote from Jack Kornfield's work “A Path with Heart,” this next passage provides a lot of insight into American culture. “Anne Wilson Schaef, author of 'When Society Becomes an Addict,' has described it this way: The best-adjusted person in our society is the person who is not dead & not alive, just numb, a zombie. When you are dead you're not able to do the work of the society. When you are fully alive you are constantly saying 'No' to many of the processes of society, the racism, the polluted environment, the nuclear threat, the arms race, drinking unsafe water & eating carcinogenic foods. Thus it is in the interests of our society to promote those things that take the edge off, keep us busy with our fixes, & keep us slightly numbed out & zombie-like. In this way our modern consumer society functions as an addict.”

I am beginning to realize that I can't change people, & to a bittersweet extent, that some people haven't changed. Though I want to put faith in the belief that because I myself have undergone something momentous & have changed, that others too must have likewise grown & flourished. However, I cannot apply this truth to many people in my life who I knew before I embarked upon my journey here. Those who were moody & passive-aggressive in my life before I left, though they may tout the virtues of happiness, are still the same individuals underneath those layers. Their true selves lie like monsters in caves, waiting to be coaxed out snarling, nostrils ablaze, by a stressful situation or a period of difficulty. I believe firmly that the true character of a person can be determined by actions undertaken not in times of peace & tranquility, but during times of hardship. One of the Japanese JIKA volunteers here, Nana, is prone to laughter & humor when times get tough. This speaks novels about who she truly is.

Friends who were unreliable, distant, in crisis, or absent when I left America are still broken, lost, & unable or unwilling to heal. The people who haven't kept in touch, despite our pasts together & despite my predisposition to continually reach out, are unlikely now to deviate from their chosen paths where I am concerned. These are blessings, rather than curses, because in many ways, the slow detraction from friendship leading to an unfinished ending simply due to circumstance is an ideal. What better way to depart from someone in life but by choosing to walk down a different road & not immediately noticing that the fork takes either of you in very opposing directions? But it is admittedly disheartening to think that many people I once knew, particularly people whom I truly loved, did not choose a path at all. They are stagnant where we parted, & I only need double-back to find them again, though this is an impossibility if I wish to continue to move forward.

It is not the act of change that defines who we are, but the will to change, the desire to change for the better.