There was a breeze this evening just as the sun was dipping below the tree line. The air was gently perfumed with frangipani and the possibility of rain.
It was only when I noticed the breeze out the window that I realised how long it had been since there had been one. I walked down the road for a bit taking deep breaths and relishing in the coolness. The sky looked as if it were blushing and everything was quiet except for the whisper of leaves.
These days I have a lot of free time after school and it's allowed me to appreciate the small things such as a cool breeze. It was just another thing I hadn't truly appreciated until it wasn't there any more.
Phibun life isn't exciting in the way it was in India where every day something crazy happened.
(I was thinking* the other day about how to describe India and the first word that popped into my head was intense. I remember feeling that it didn't have quite the impact that India deserves and that 'intense' is overused these days. We should probably save it for actually intense things. Not to describe a conversation or a movie ie "that movie was intense man" when what you really mean was that the movie was pretty interesting and you managed to not fall asleep half way through.
*This was one of those thoughts that you don't realise you've had until you remember it later. Sometimes I think there are about ten tabs open in my brain at any given time.)
Any way back to having a lot of time... naturally this means time to think and most importantly, I've come to realise, time to be bored.
Most of us, myself included, tend to think being bored is a bad thing and try to avoid it as much as possible. Running from everyday mundaneity is partly the reason I wanted to travel. To break away from the 9-5 and fill life with as much as possible.
However I've come to realise the brief chapters of boredom are ok. It's during these still moments that all the good thinking happens. The mind has time to sort itself out and subconciously forms plans or analyses past decisions/conversations/actions and picks out pearls of wisdom to store away for the future.
Without this time to reflect we are just going through life packing it full of experiences but not learning anything. It's like shopping for the thrill of it without actually looking at what you've bought when you get home and what's the point of that? (I hate to use shopping as an analogy for life but you catch my drift I hope).
So what have I been doing in Thailand? I've been watching Rick and Morty and old Graham Norton episodes whilst eating single serve fluorescent fruit flavoured jelly on my Hello Kitty bed sheets. I've discovered new artists and music and read countless articles both trashy and academic.
I've spent evenings sipping iced chocolate with LS at our favourite cafe talking about everything from politics to bear puns, the Thai schooling system and dirty jokes.
I've written various rambles in my journal that will never see the light of day, tried my hand at sketching, written some terrible haikus and had my horizons widened by some great podcasters.
So even though there's nothing really that exciting to write home about I thought it was only honest to write about the quiet spells in between the excitement of travel because without these moments the other bits wouldn't have the same effect.
Most of the time we are just human beings not human doings and that's actually probably ok!
It was only when I noticed the breeze out the window that I realised how long it had been since there had been one. I walked down the road for a bit taking deep breaths and relishing in the coolness. The sky looked as if it were blushing and everything was quiet except for the whisper of leaves.
These days I have a lot of free time after school and it's allowed me to appreciate the small things such as a cool breeze. It was just another thing I hadn't truly appreciated until it wasn't there any more.
Phibun life isn't exciting in the way it was in India where every day something crazy happened.
(I was thinking* the other day about how to describe India and the first word that popped into my head was intense. I remember feeling that it didn't have quite the impact that India deserves and that 'intense' is overused these days. We should probably save it for actually intense things. Not to describe a conversation or a movie ie "that movie was intense man" when what you really mean was that the movie was pretty interesting and you managed to not fall asleep half way through.
*This was one of those thoughts that you don't realise you've had until you remember it later. Sometimes I think there are about ten tabs open in my brain at any given time.)
Any way back to having a lot of time... naturally this means time to think and most importantly, I've come to realise, time to be bored.
Most of us, myself included, tend to think being bored is a bad thing and try to avoid it as much as possible. Running from everyday mundaneity is partly the reason I wanted to travel. To break away from the 9-5 and fill life with as much as possible.
However I've come to realise the brief chapters of boredom are ok. It's during these still moments that all the good thinking happens. The mind has time to sort itself out and subconciously forms plans or analyses past decisions/conversations/actions and picks out pearls of wisdom to store away for the future.
Without this time to reflect we are just going through life packing it full of experiences but not learning anything. It's like shopping for the thrill of it without actually looking at what you've bought when you get home and what's the point of that? (I hate to use shopping as an analogy for life but you catch my drift I hope).
So what have I been doing in Thailand? I've been watching Rick and Morty and old Graham Norton episodes whilst eating single serve fluorescent fruit flavoured jelly on my Hello Kitty bed sheets. I've discovered new artists and music and read countless articles both trashy and academic.
I've spent evenings sipping iced chocolate with LS at our favourite cafe talking about everything from politics to bear puns, the Thai schooling system and dirty jokes.
I've written various rambles in my journal that will never see the light of day, tried my hand at sketching, written some terrible haikus and had my horizons widened by some great podcasters.
So even though there's nothing really that exciting to write home about I thought it was only honest to write about the quiet spells in between the excitement of travel because without these moments the other bits wouldn't have the same effect.
Most of the time we are just human beings not human doings and that's actually probably ok!
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| The view from my front door - Phibun Mangsahan, July 2017 |
