Mikes Thoughts

thinking on this day

I left the US the last time in September 2022. After a year in Mexico. It’s been an interesting set of moments. When I was writing this morning thought on this day. It used to be bbq and fireworks. Time at the house. The kids. From about 2009 on happiness was at a premium. Things just seemed crazy then. Like all I had known or believed became something else. Everything seemed to turn to another axis. To become strange.

Even with what happened after, I knew my times were limited in that country. There was something about it which seemed strained and breaking. Most of all though there was something inside me. This need. I had dreamt of going. Just going for a long time. Things I had done needed to be fixed. They took years and taught lessons. Finally though the last critical multi million dollar program faded. And I left.

Independence Day meanings

It did not just happen that March day. Nor did I fully realize that day in Japan what it meant. Work had claimed me for too many years. I remember asking then,

What do I do now?

It has seemed in retrospect we always need something. Something to do. Perhaps we feel we have failed something or ourselves. Our little universal clocks stop. We don’t have milestones or tasks. Things to do. Places to be. People to meet. Instead we have this lifetime given back to find a new life exclusive of the old one bending us to clocks and time. Perhaps in our western minds that’s the hardest thing. We seem to need the constancy of engagement. Of managing. Of surpassing. Doing. When the little clock stops we find life skips a beat. That’s really what this is about.

Skipping the beat of life

That’s not easy you know. We need to feel we own things and deeds to do. To forever track and be tracked. But no. It’s not what life is about. I think life could give a fuck if you do or don’t do a thing. It will go on. So I found after Japan that Vietnam again gave me pause. It was like all just stopped. Paused. Hanoi became a reflection of a crazy clock that stopped. For months I just went. Don’t want to be here. Go there. From that point I learned skipping the perennial beat was the idea. It was not the exception. Leaving the US was the marker in the road. The sign which said,

Go this way. No expectations. Take your life back.

So I did. And I got something immeasurable and perennial. That same thing we celebrate on this day. You know the thing...

Independence.

Yeah that thing. Freedom. How long are we supposed to wait. How much to give and surrender. For me I gave it all up. Willingly. Cars and homes. California and people then. Some amazed I would just go.

But let me ask. What is it we are supposed to do when we stop. Just sit in McDonald’s and play cribbage our lives away. Should we not find the moments we truly want. Exercise them. See how they play out. Find our our sense without others telling us it’s nonsense.

So I left and arrived

Each time I found the going. The arriving. From Tokyo to Taipei. Down a street in Can Tho to meet my old friend lily for beers and food and talk. All else fell away and I knew I had finally left. And arrived.

So happy Independence Day. Mine is spent overthinking what it’s meant. When my wife kisses me and tells me to go enjoy coffee out. I feel I’ve found my independence. My time to leave and arrive. My days in sun and clouds.

What else is there besides feeling I have today at this coffee shop in Cambodia. This life. I don’t need fireworks. I have now. And a photo of some place I went to and found my moments in.

my wife

For her I am forever thankful. Life has never ceased being strange. I’ll just be forever glad that it is. I’ll take it. Just like feeling her warm Cambodian body next to me each day.

Love you honey. Thanks for it all that you give willingly.