A sacred pause to return to resilience
Musings from me time in Vietnam
I am in Hoi An, Vietnam. The last time I was here was 2015, more than ten years ago. I fell dramatically from a bicycle here, and broke my left foot. Then I followed a man, and broke my only heart.
That summer was also the summer that my father passed away. He got a rare infection and spent weeks in coma, on life support in the ICU of the hospital — until my mom, my brother and I decided together to let him go.
Right before this trifecta of life’s trials came — one after the other — I had just finished a 10-day vipassana retreat, and experienced the felt sense of meditation for first time ever. Before that, I realized I had only been assuming a posture to make myself appear like a person meditating.
In those 10 days, I learned to observe the movements of life without getting too personally involved. Honestly, I don’t know how I would have navigated that time of my life without this quality of meditation imprinted in me. It probably would have been much rougher for me.
Fast forward to now. A lot has changed since then and a lot feels the same too. So much weight has been shed. So much capacity grown. And yet, evolution continues. It doesn’t take time for holidays.
Life is intense. I haven’t had much space to process all the happenings of the last weeks. It’s been good having time here to catch up with myself.
Oh, yes. There it is again: the unforgettable truth that slips through the cracks of memory. The steady pour of life force that always refills our well. And all we have to do is stop moving long enough to collect it.
I am walking everywhere in Hoi An this weekend. To be fair, I did try getting back on the bicycle again (quite literally) but the bicycle I chose turned out to have a flat tire. So I took that as a sign that I was better off walking — an experience that I missed out on last time, since I was on crutches.
I am writing a lot. I am buying handmade pottery from artisan shops. I am drinking Vietnamese coffee, the dark elixir with sweetened condensed milk. Munching on Banh Xeo (pancakes). Slurping Cau Lao (noodles).
The flavor of the transmission that I receive from being here is: Resilience.
The Vietnamese have been through some ugly shit. It is written. You can read it between the lines on the faces of their elders. You can see, they remember when. The younger generation may not have lived through the war, but it’s in them. They’ve inherited fiercely strong spirit. A maturity. A gravitas. A grounded sense of getting on with it.
This morning I passed a shop selling old propaganda posters — framed sheets of rice paper printed with war slogans, which are valuable collectors’ items now. What a way to turn painful memory into business opportunity. This might be the starkest example of resilience I found.
As I wander the streets, I remind myself that every melodrama that’s woven to capture our attention is temporary. It can be hard to see when we are living through it — but it’s obvious on some giantess’s time scale.
It’s wild how fear often seems so much realer than reality. But how cool is it that power always returns to us when we pause to rest in now.
This is the message that’s coming in loud: Keep on going. Do not be afraid.
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