Mikes Thoughts

The content gap

I really enjoy writing the things I do these days. I feel there is this story to be told. From a coffee in Siem Reap to a walk down side streets and alleys. Dirt roads that let me see cows and chickens. Kids that run out always to say hello. Give me a high five. Even hold my hand and walk with me. Khmer children are the most darling and endearing sorts. Full of the honest expression I sometimes feel adults here hold back. It’s okay for them to express sadness, anger, happiness. It’s like what life is. The Khmer adults seem to hold that back. To not let feeling surface besides their forever desire to just be happy. My onetime friend Mao told me,

We are taught that and are told to only show happiness.

Mao had a unique perspective since he lived in America for years. He had to reboot himself. To find that life there was not anything like here. For five years he learned. His Khmer wife told me she loved him and his differences.

I see the differences daily. The little boy crying and my wife telling me once to just look happy on the outside no matter how I felt. This seemed a deception to me. Like it’s okay to show feelings if it’s happiness. Anything else people here do not like. It creates this chasm of life. This gap. Barang people living here soon learn that Khmer people just seem happy and calm all the time. While most of us cannot be. Nor do we want that. What we do want is freedom of expression. Not to feel coerced into any kind of feeling if it’s not ours.

Many people do YouTube vlogs on life here. You can find others that do life in Thailand or Vietnam or name the place. This is about people mostly wanting self expression and creativity and being able to show others how life can be here.

I’ve felt this gap with both things. How Khmer people act and react and how barang people living here act. I’ve believed we are all isolated and in our little pockets. Not because we lack desire. But I think because we are simply different. Sometimes way different. The life it creates for us can be good. We can find happiness here. Live our retirement years in some joy. But we also will never be just accepted here I don’t believe. We are different and will be forever. We can never be Khmer people and I would not want it. People in the videos say we will acclimatize like life here is the weather. It’s not. The weather can be gotten used to. Can be accepted and lived with. I don’t believe the differences ever can be we are just too different.

So what’s the outcome if this gap. What happens to us here. I think a few things.

  1. We learn to live a life of differences. We make our little safe environments where our things matter and we participate in the wider world of Cambodians and others where their life is.
  2. We find relationships. Perhaps love. I did. Perhaps we expect those things to cross over the gap. They do and don’t. Like most human things.
  3. We learn to stay with the differences. To thrive. Some of us to merely survive. Or we leave. We think it must be different in Thailand or Vietnam. It is. Life changes. My Vietnamese friends are different. Here’s the main thing with this. We are not meant to bridge the gap. We are meant to live separate I believe.

We will never be at home here. It will never be this whole thing. We can have the bits we control. The apartment made for us. Perhaps with our privacy. Our needs met. But outside is the wider world. The YouTube content creators will show you their world. Their works and play.

I just write one persons feelings here. How this blog crosses a place and how I cannot. It’s easy to live here. There’s no big challenge to finding a life here. Doing the things you find of value or doing things you just want. Take it all. Or none. Hold the child’s hand or go your own way. No judgements. They all know there is a gap here.

It’s not just content. It’s life folks. It’s how we find life. How we live it. The YouTube creators only show their life. Their living. What they find. Your mileage may fucking vary.

Not a downer and not uplifting

I don’t mean this to be either. It’s is life here. There is happiness to be found here and sadness and wanting some little bit of the things Khmer people do not understand. Things like privacy. Solitude. Going our own way. I’ve found I must have them. I cannot be the social person. Perhaps it’s age and a lack of desire to do those things. I left Facebook years ago. That world with the 100 or so friends dropped away. Here it’s a big deal.

So what will you find here? You will find downers and uplifting parts. Like life. The chasm from Khmer to barang can be small or threatening. If you want some kind of assimilation, good luck.

My take is there will always be the gap. Because it’s meant to be. We cannot be like others. Cannot be changed out like the Khmer kids taught to only show happiness. All of our things are entrenched and our beliefs about how it all works.

Living here has been enlightening and scary sometimes. I don’t make an effort anymore to fit in or change. I just am how I am as Popeye said.

Mind the gap.