Thanks for asking. I'm noodling on a proper response to this as an update post. But here's something from TFA that's relevant:
In the Philippines a family living in a shack opened their last can of tinned meat as a banquet for me, a stranger who needed a place to crash. Below a wintry pass north of Gilgit in the Pakistan Himalayas, a group of startled firewood harvesters shared their tiny shelter and ash-baked bread with me when I bounded unannounced into their campfire circle one evening. We ended up sleeping like sardines under a single home-woven blanket while snow fell. In Taiwan, a student I met on the street one day befriended me in that familiar way to most travelers, but surprised me by offering me a place at his family’s apartment in Taipei. While he was away at school, I sat in on the family meals and had my own bedroom for two weeks.
I read this article like two hours ago or something, and I keep spinning through these visuals. I think: if one single of these things had happened to me -- if I'd been brave enough and adventurous enough to have had one single encounter of the calibre depicted here -- I'd be milking it to the end of time. It would be amongst the memories that flashed through my mind on my deathbed, I'm certain.
And yet to KK, that's Wednesday. No big. It's like KK has lived 10,000 worth of Elvis Mercury lives, because he chose to have them. He is Elon Musk and I'm the homeless guy sniffing glue and collapsing into my tent, thinking the wind is the voice of god.
I've been unemployed for coming up on three months, and some things have happened, but articles like the linked one remind me of what the ceiling is; and remind me of how easy it is to calibrate to some local context. And to wonder: is such calibration the cause, or the effect, of who we are?
Thanks for asking. I'm noodling on a proper response to this as an update post. But here's something from TFA that's relevant:
I read this article like two hours ago or something, and I keep spinning through these visuals. I think: if one single of these things had happened to me -- if I'd been brave enough and adventurous enough to have had one single encounter of the calibre depicted here -- I'd be milking it to the end of time. It would be amongst the memories that flashed through my mind on my deathbed, I'm certain.
And yet to KK, that's Wednesday. No big. It's like KK has lived 10,000 worth of Elvis Mercury lives, because he chose to have them. He is Elon Musk and I'm the homeless guy sniffing glue and collapsing into my tent, thinking the wind is the voice of god.
I've been unemployed for coming up on three months, and some things have happened, but articles like the linked one remind me of what the ceiling is; and remind me of how easy it is to calibrate to some local context. And to wonder: is such calibration the cause, or the effect, of who we are?