You ever have one of those days?

October 22nd, 2007

You know the kind, where you experience something and it makes you look at your life in a whole new way? I love it when that happens, when I have those moments that help me remember what is important and what is trivial. I appreciate the times when I experience something that makes the politics of the workplace or the lemming-ness of the crowd seem silly. I had one of those this week.

I am a writer by trade. I have one book in print and I am in the process of doing research for a second. As a part of that research I did some travel this week to a remote mountain village, a place that is not accessible by any motorized vehicle. I found myself sitting, surrounded by people with extremely little to no education, a people whose language I have spent several years struggling to learn, and found myself truly welcomed.

In this village, running water doesn’t exist. Electricity is the exception, not the rule. The *ahem* facilities involve finding a hidden spot among some trees and hoping there aren’t any wild animals nearby. We were a 2 hour walk from the nearest small town of a couple thousand people, where everyone from the surrounding countryside comes once a week to buy and sell at the weekly market.

Amazingly, in this context, in a mud and stone building high up in the mountains, I was engaged in fascinating and deep discussions about politics, family life, history, religion, and how wonderful it is that cell phones have been invented and the price has come down to the level where nearly every family on the mountain can buy one. Although uneducated, these are intelligent and wise people with interesting insights into life.

How ironic that I couldn’t wait to blog about it…

Entry Filed under: General