Mysterious Ways

Addis Ababa 

Here in an airport lounge, stuck after missing a connecting flight, I ponder the wonder and grandeur of it all.  The hurt and the heartbreak, the love and the love lost.  Nothing challenges me deeper to my core than traveling. 

You really get to confront all your demons, in a strange land.

"Oh holy holy holy.  All land on this Earth, sacred, all men, my brothers."  

With this prayer I enter the great mother continent, again.  Africa, deep into your heart I go.    

India my love, my first true love, I've left you behind for now, though these past nine months have given me a sense that you are never far; always close to my heart, right from the start.  

The love India has given me, the strength to make it anywhere, knowing I have in her, home.  

Home is where the heart and hurt are.  

I left India again to the fireworks of a wonderful party, with my dearest friends, amidst such positive energy.  A strange sort of tradition of mine, parting with a party.  In the past it was with family, and now, it is with friends and loved ones.  How times change.  I party it up while next door my cousins sleep, and I leave without saying goodbye.   

I wonder if it hurts them as much as it does, me.  After all, I was the one descending into wonderland every couple of years on vacation, toting gifts to buy their love and affection, to assuage the inevitable jealousy and frustrations that defined their lives.

And now India is my motherland; spiritual home; my Israel.  And for them it's just a corrupt, backwards and cut throat jungle.  They lack perspective because they've never traveled.  They don't realize how special it is as a result, caught in routine and mundane habits.  Kind of how I felt about New York until I went to University, and then I understood.  Education, from books or experience, gives you that perspective to understand your life - what they lack - and what kills them slowly.  

My poor Indian family, and they have money!       

In India my creator, my soul, the divine energy, I felt it flow through my core, aware of the blessings and joy of following the path of love and spiritual rejuvenation.  This is my life, how I've decided to live it and what I work for.  India saved me, again.  Though it is never easy.  It always make me suffer and brings me to the edge of what looks and feels like the abyss.  I stare out into that unknown, unsure and apprehensivve, humbled and destroyed; my arrogance checked, my ego vanquished.  And each time I feel tested by Mother India.  Do I trust and believe and transmit the smiles and good feelings, or do I allow the negativity to engulf me?  And that is what India is about, about making the right choice, amidst the chaos, about believing in humanity and the struggle.

There is much that is wrong in India; where does one even begin?

But the vibrancy and the colors truly open up a man's heart to the possibility of what it means to be human.  

Behaviorists, believing in the sanctity of experience/environment as the defining influence on humans, need to come to India.  For if experience was paramount, nobody would ever smile in India,and the place would wipe away any humanity that has to suffer such indignities and cruelties.  But not only does humanity endure in India, it bursts forth in unexpected ways.  There is something that refuses to give in to circumstances, almost perverse in its tenacity.  That is India for me.  And for all her lovers.  She moves in mysterious ways.