Lately I have become aware that how I am presently living my life is what I had yearned for after getting out of high school. During the long period of public schooling I did not give much thought to what life could be because I felt trapped in a system which offered no way of escape. People who knew me said it was only a matter of time before I dropped out because of how unhappy I was. But dropping out did not enter my thoughts because I felt things would only get worse if I chose that. The day I graduated I felt a lightness in my spirit, and a sense of freedom that was exhilarating. That feeling did not last long because I was soon required to find a summer job to pay for college. I ended up working maintenance in a factory, even though I had no skills in fixing things, and had no interest in learning. I took the job because the alternative was working at Taco Bell, and the thought of seeing an endless line of faces made me cringe.
The three months I spent at the factory were unlike anything I had experienced before or since. I was unaccustomed to standing and walking for 8 hours, and with my job having no set routine I was left to myself to find things to do. I dusted, I swept, I moved things, I even raked the pebbles on the lunch grounds into patterns resembling a Zen rock garden, even though at that time I was unaware of Zen.
Two peculiar things attached themselves to me during the first week. One was the awful sense that I had been duped - was this the reason I had endured 13 years of public schooling? I knew that there were other jobs available, but what struck me was that the factory was a place which displayed most of the jobs available in other places - manual labor, administrative, technical/scientific, finance, and executive. I could change the place of employment but I knew it would be pretty much the same - 8 hours wasted doing the bidding of others. I could sense a vision inside of me, but it was unclear, I could only feel that there was a better way to live, and it was possible, but I did not know how to find and get to it. The other thing which became a part of me was the awful sensation of time. The one thing I liked about school was the reading and writing, and the chance to use these skills in a creative way. Having this sense of joy was what kept me from dropping out, and it also created a sense of time flow. At the factory there was no reading or writing, and the thing which I was charged to do, maintenance, had a creative side, but I so loathed it that I refused to give it any thought. The disinterest and hatred for my assigned task created a time vacuum which extended my sense of it to an outer limit which was completely at odds with flow. Time - the hours, minutes, and seconds, became heavy objects which were difficult to move. When I arrived in the morning and stepped out of my truck, I could feel this heaviness wrapping itself tightly around my thoughts. The moment I stamped my time card each individual minute became an enemy, a warrior set in my path who had to be fought and overcome. One hour later I would be fatigued from the fight, which made the future minutes grow stronger, longer, more determined than ever to glue me to their side, making it difficult to advance to the next one. I had never experienced time in this way before, and it was truly an awful way to experience life. When a day would finally close out I would ride home feeling battered and numb.
These two things, being played for a sucker, and the absurdly long duration of a single day, muted my inner life, beat it senseless, making the light inside my heart flee. I became aware as I lay in bed each night that I could no longer feel with my heart, that I had been reduced to a soulless machine. I would lay stiffly on my back, looking at the vague, murky outline of the walls. I refused to move, and I would sleep without a stir, waking in the same position which I started in.
Since I have been living here in Chiang Mai, I sometimes recall the days at the factory, specifically the sense that there was something out there for me, but I did not know what it was or where to look for it. Lately there have been moments where I feel a sense of supreme happiness, the result of having found the vision, it becoming clear and blindingly bright - the vision being this : to live, to be happy, all I need to do is wander about under the light of the sun, observing the immense beauty contained in each passing moment. That all I really want out of life is the freedom to do this, and this freedom is what is most hard to come by. As a child, the freedom comes in slight nuances of time and color - summer vacations and weekends, nights in bed, wandering the neighborhood in late afternoons after school. When school no longer is the slave driver, employment takes its place. The vision of freedom is the two week vacation, the weekend, the nights in bed, wandering the neighborhood in the late afternoons.
I take what is given to me. It appears that all I can have are these stolen moments of freedom. What is important is to recognize the vision of this freedom, to not squander it, allowing it to grow. The main purpose of this trip has nothing to do with "travel". It is instead to wander about under the sun in complete freedom. I can do this anywhere - Chiang Mai, Bali, Italy, Urbana. But freedom from what? I want to be an autonomous, self-contained universe. During the past two months I have come closer to this sublime freedom than ever before.
