Past and Pending

I am having real trouble beginning this post for reasons I do not fully understand. The truth is- I am afraid of where this entry will go, considering all that is on my mind. I could easily write you beautiful stories about the travel I have been doing- about what it was like to get off my crutches finally- about buying new clothes, about meeting architects and designers from all over India- but what I really want to talk about is my desire every day to enjoy my morning tea.

Because I’ll be gone soon. It’s not the tea or the masala dosa that I crave every day- it’s the being here. I crave existing in this world. I cannot capture it. I cannot take it with me. It won’t ever be once the intercom announces “Welcome to the United States” .. India will not be there, instead it will be me and my suitcases. Welcome ‘back’ everyone will say. Welcome ‘home’ everyone will say.

I’ve been stuck on this for a while. “I can’t wait till you are home!” everyone says… but what does it mean to be home? Is it not where you are cared for, understood, appreciated, loved? In this case, I have been blessed to have many, many homes.  And if this is true, are we ever truly ‘back’? How can one ‘belong’ anywhere with a world so vast with global connections made between people so easily? My whole reality of place and space seems to have transformed in just two months and I am afraid of the harshness in misunderstandings of this.

I feel so strange about the unpacking and repacking that I did yesterday. The Western-style clothes that I intend to leave here, the nick nacks that I brought from home to comfort me now feeling like dead weight on my back. There are pieces of my life I am willingly leaving behind.  It reminds me of a few summers back at a camp I went to that really inspired and moved me- they said that as you pack you choose what you put in the suitcase, but you also decide what you leave behind- physical, spiritual, emotional, personal- all these parts of ourselves we must check before we begin to move on. All these parts of me are changing and rearranging and entering that plane differently.

I am constantly asking questions of myself. Who was I before, who I am I now, who will I be after… my past, present and future selves seem to be complicating one another. Reality sets in and it becomes clear that we are all at once, the conglomerate of each and every part of our lives- in each moment we are our present past and future selves, struggling for who gets the control of the next move. All three are the same, awaiting our recognition of them- awaiting our concept of time to label them. When does something become the past? Do we ever really let go of it? And how do we decide what we are in the present without acknowledging that past and inviting the future to persuade our change? Our bodies tell stories of all our lives. We are all pieces of the past, present and future trying to reconcile the challenges of being.

And so, when you ask, “How was India?” I will not know what to say. Not just because the complexities of this question are beyond my plausible explanation- but because how India ‘was’ and how India ‘is’ and how India ‘will be’ are all the same for me. The idea of past present and future have flowed together leaving me with the actuality that  they are one in the same and my stories of what happened two weeks ago impact me as deeply as the story of this mornings cup of tea.

And I imagine when I get to the US it will be similar. How “India was” will change from day to day. My story of the day will change. My recollections will vary. The stories of the past will lose their luster as the reality of the pending future will outweigh their glory. The past and the future will merge in the present moment.

This is to say that I will be back here. There will be no “was” India- rather, I prefer, how “is” India.. because somehow, as if by magical chance and destiny’s making- this place has become a part of me. The sun has knitted its stories into the freckles of my skin and sang songs in my heart in languages I do not understand but comfort me in ways I could never explain. It cannot be determined in numbers and figures or in small shared stories. It cannot be written. It can only be experienced.

I am nervous about this. About the coming ‘back’ process. When one feels as though they have the fabric of another weaved into their skin the original stitches have shifted and new ones must be placed differently than before. My US home will not be the same as I left it. I am arriving as a different set of past and present and future than I was on June 2nd. There must be care taken with this. Understanding and respect and admiration for the changes that come and go and bring us joy.

And it will be a challenge to accept that there will be misunderstandings, but there will be no settling. There will be no giving in to fruitless anger. It is useless to feed frustrations toward our personal misunderstandings and the misunderstandings of others.  There can only be acceptance that misunderstandings are just another part of our lives. Misunderstanding walks with us wherever we are and we mustn’t be afraid. Real understanding is only found within, and when we have our past present and futures each to console us, understanding ourselves is a difficult task in its own right.

This is something new and beautiful- to see misunderstanding and not try to transform it, rather allow it to live in us. To learn to be around misunderstandings and accept the virtue that none of our lives are understood in black and white. The range of colors that we are make it impossible to simplify us to just our primary sources. There are complexities and layers within us and around us that we may never fully understand.

But this is not misunderstanding. This is change. This is growth. This is living.

It is divinely human to misunderstand our many beings and there is beautiful solitude in this.