Simply Enterprising

A Grameen Bank project called Village Phone in Uganda.

Why Fly?

As I’m flying back to Denver and look out the airplane window into a quiet and vast field of clouds, I’m taken back to my several trips home. Home in this case being both Doha and Bombay.

The choice of music playing in my ears: Motorcycle Diaries, “Apertura” (http://www.last.fm/music/Gustavo+Santaolalla/_/Apertura).

It’s a journey from my present to my past. The flight is the same, the white clouds are the same, but the feeling is different. How interesting it is, that just the thought of flying home vs. flying back to Denver evokes a different emotion.

In today’s time we have to dig deeper into our emotions to elicit the appropriate feelings. There was a time during my adolescent years when traveling in a bus would be associated with a certain emotion versus traveling in a train. And the type of bus or train I traveled in mattered, since each one would have a different feel to it. A specific space in that left brain (or right for left-handers) for a specific travel experience.

Track changes to “To be Fee” by Mike Oldfield (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd7vwA9kXEM).

I’m reminded of a book I read for a class sometime ago called The Clock of Long Now (http://www.longnow.org/about/). The premise of the book is that the concept of time in today’s society is quite lost. Sorry, not concept, but respect for time is lost. The earth’s rotation around the sun: 365 and 1/4^th days. Compare this to our natural lifetime; in the first 24 hours of being born we change from being listeners to the outside world to being a part of its voice. In 365 ¼ days we change from a hand-foot crawl (slow) experience to a walking (fast) experience. Are we supposed to lose sense of time or better yet respect that each experience teaches us to respect time more.

Track changes to “Mera Jahan” from the movie Tare Zameen Par (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rasW63-LL9A), a bollywood track that sings about the life, a disabled child sees and experiences.

Anyway, back to my plane ride story. In a couple of months I’ll be taking another plane ride, all the way to the other side of the world, to Bangladesh. I express the feeling of joy, excitement and maybe even a sense of home (??). That land is still my land where the people are still my people. I don’t have any friends or family there, yet there is a connection. I know that I’ll be treated as family and taken care of as one of them. Sorry if I digressed again. The point being that in preparation for our team’s summer trip for a field study, I initially wanted to travel to a number of countries to get a general idea of the needs of the farmers: 3 weeks in Bangladesh, 3 weeks in Nepal and 3 weeks in Ethiopia. But now I think differently. As I sit by the window looking at the clouds, I realize that the land beneath it has changed dramatically and I haven’t walked with the land to understand this change.

Yes, I come from a high-context culture and we tend to not get to the point immediately and yes, you are dying to know why I write this. So let me just conclude here as my song and playlist nears its end. I want to breath the soil, air and water of the places I visit in Bangladesh. I want to live under a $1/day for a week and feel life like the inside of my skin among these poor farmers. I want to slow time down and crawl like a child and get my hands and feet dirty playing in the fields. Be happy and give happiness.

Do give yourself that change and time to live a different life among a different culture and time zone. Maybe the time zones we have setup globally should be changed to accommodate the true time. If you travel to the US, you wear a wrist-watch; when you go down to the Amazon, you watch the sun rise and set and when you live among the poor farmers, you follow a crop cycle.

I had to change to a new song that fits this theme so well. Another bollywood song and, of course, a love song. But the concept of time fits in perfectly. Song: “Pehli Nazar Mein” from the movie Race (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiaV67y_bNM). The song asks you to come embrace the present, because only when you do so will time stop and last forever. Time will only begin again when you stop loving, enjoying and being happy. What do you think?

Yes, you must be wondering that the last paragraph was meant to be the concluding one. But remember, I come from a culture for whom time is circular. I stop to start again. My apologies to all the linear time keepers. But if you have read this far, then you will definitely enjoy reading further.

I consider New Mexico my home in the US. Why? Because it was there that time stopped for me. For four years I loved and lived every sunset, thunderstorm, climbing experience. I met women and grew my hair long. This child became a teenager there. But then the time came to move out of the house and become a more responsible person. The time has come to go after my true calling (yeah I actually used this term although it is taboo and doesn’t mean much). Time to make an impact in the world to empower my fellow world or global citizens (more on this phrase later) and myself.

My plane just turned, which means we will be arriving to Denver soon. In the end, I want to leave you with a few keywords: “LOOK OUT THE WINDOW OF YOUR PLANE, CAR or TRAIN or WHATEVER, Slow your time!!

I leave you with “Mi’Ma’amakim” from The Idan Rachel Project (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0PWukxRV8U&NR=1), sung in Hebrew and an Ethiopian language.

Cheers!!