Mapping the Gap

The Indonesian flag is a simple one.  It’s comprised of two horizontal bars of colour: red on top and white on the bottom.  The red is for Courage.  The white, for Purity of Intention.  In this paradise of poverty, I’m reflecting on both, and what they might mean for a gal of good fortune, like me.

When you travel as a “westerner” to “developing” countries, you find yourself in mind games.  You battle the outer assault of vendors and beggars and the inner skirmish of defences and guilt.  When the impoverished predators circle, and you find you are the prey, your innards seem to stretch in a vicious tug-o-war. Your guts twist like live bait at the thought of be swindled in some obvious street scam, and your chest aches as guilt swings from your heart strings like some privileged Tarzan.  You don’t want to be greedy, but you don’t want to be dumb.  A step in either direction seems errored.  It’s easy to spend a great deal of one’s travels grappling with this ever-present dilemma of an advantaged life.  The unnerving hiss of a leak in one’s usual self-assurance can be a real nuisance on a hard-earned trip. 

Sure, you can research and try to be savvy, but you can’t avoid the tourist hustle.  From the over-zealous t-shirt slinger to the temple guide over-charging for a tour.  From the driver who pretends your rate was per person to the pre-paid tour of a market that turns out the be closed.  From the over-priced snorkels that don’t make a seal to the street toy that breaks in an hour.  From the tales of hardship that are a bit too well-rehearsed to handicraft demos that morph into showroom hard sells.  You cannot escape it, not with your privilege woven into your skin.  You are the prey.  You are the profit.  You are the income.  You are the dinner on a family’s table, the petrol in the motorbike, the incense to burn with a prayer.  It’s a hot seat to sit in…especially for a year.  I mean, it’s this sort of unpleasant predator-prey dynamic that makes all of us relieved to walk in the door of home-sweet-home at the end of any overseas trip.  Ahhh, the happy solace of fixed prices and socio-economic peers.  Life’s so much easier at home.

But in our trailhead destination of Indonesia, I’ve endeavoured to crack this old nut.  Walking through these old tourist scenarios, I’ve been observing the movements of my troubled mind.  I’ve been trailing my thoughts down old pathways, noticing the expired habits of a brain on defence.  I have witnessed the scramble of an uncertain ego, the squirm of a victim feeling pinned in.  I’ve watched the mounting frustration, the unfolding of a shameful defeat.  I’ve swung from guilt to anger to betrayal and ended with the urge to stay in.  It’s clear all this torment is self-inflicted.  Again, it’s all in my head. The question now to consider: How does all of this end?

Well, the error of my ways is clear.  When you decide to approach people and situations on the defensive, you taint your own experience, and you soil any chance of having a genuine exchange with the other soul.  In tribute to the least appealing aspects of humanity, you forfeit the opportunity to encounter our highest good.  When you are a slave to suspicion, you surrender dominion over your mind space for fear of being made a fool.  To treat others with wariness and to expect deceit raises feelings of victimhood: shame, helplessness, resentment, anger and then guilt- all of which cost me the peace of mind needed to fully appreciate these numbered days on the road.  The cost of a guarded mind is my integrity and my ability to recognise theirs.  In any attempt to be savvy, I also stem any potential for good flow between us- the flow of fortune, the flow of goodwill, the flow of generosity, and the flow of gratitude, which always ripples out into the world in mysterious and powerful ways.  This is not what I came here to do.  Pushing on in a victory-less war on scams and deception, I could sacrifice far too many precious moments of this gap year.  I could snuff out the flames of human connection that I had hoped to fan into friendships.  I could miss this whole beautiful ride living up in my head, entertaining phantoms of a first-world fiction.  Why the hell would I do that?  Fear.  Ego.  Defence.  Guilt.  Shame.  True thieves of this story, line up!

On the other hand, I can approach all situations with a wise knowing of how the world works and a freedom from any fear of being foolish.   When I do this, I can smile warmly at a man who is overcharging me and retain ownership of my inner experience.  If I can resist the temptation to build ramparts around my ego, if I can let go of the need to be clever, I can cultivate a mind space that is protected by its own lack of defence.  You cannot break into a home that is unlocked.  You cannot steal what I willingly give.  You cannot deceive me when I accept that I don’t need to know.  Our barricades of suspicion are often a prison, a life-limiting cage of defence.  You can claim sovereignty in the surrender, in the acceptance of life as it is.  When we assume the best in others and sagely accept the exceptions, we cleanse our minds of mistrustful toxins and open ourselves to new gifts.

This is that Purity of Intention I’ve been considering in the white of the Indonesian flag.  Intention is an inner state with outer manifestations.  To be open, honest, and trusting in one’s dealings with others, we must begin within.  We must establish an overarching faith in the goodness of humanity in order to act with grace in interactions with our fellow upright beings.  The way to elevate one’s self is to cultivate your own Purity of Intention and then take the leap of faith to assume all others are doing the same.  I’m pretty sure it is wiser to error on the side of good… if that is what we wish to see more of in the world.  To treat honest people like criminals is a greater crime than to be swindled by someone who is certifiably criminal.  We can decide who commits the first crime.  Even though we know some people make a living off the traveller scam, the only way off the merry-go-round of misgiving and division is to embrace all people as if they are not the ones.

And let us not forget the undefeatable ambiguity we are so often dealing with in these tourist negotiations.  Do you ever really know if you paid what something is worth?  And, what is anything really worth, anyway?  How is value determined?  In the skill of creation?  In total cost of materials and production?  In scarcity?  In what the other guy paid?  Hard to say.  In the end, most things are worth exactly what someone will pay, what they see as fair price- which depends on the economy you come from.  $2 to me may be like $20 or $200 to someone in a different world of monetary worth.  Money is funny like that.  Despite the perception that the whole world revolves around the almighty dollar, it’s actually quite a flimsy and philosophical thing.  It isn’t really solid or stable or comparable without a context to define it.  If I can simply rest in the idea that I will only pay what feels reasonable for our budget, then I can release myself from the doubtful ruminations. The true measure of worth is what I am willing to part with for the service or goods that I’m buying.  Uncomplicate it.  Done. 

And any notion that there is fairness built on this wispy concept of monetary value is just silly and should be cast aside.  I can buy into the reasoning that I should pay the same price that others pay for something, but this is faulty reasoning if $5 to me is $50 to a local.  If we were to pay for things based on our percentage of income, I should pay more to be “fair.”  And do I really want to be the type of person who takes pride in paying the least possible amount, the type of person skimming the cream off the top of a local’s daily income.  Might I not better spend my influence in the world by leaving a bit of extra bread in my wake?  Call me a fool.  I’m cool with it.

And, if I find we have been scammed, which we have, then I can choose to view this more philosophically as well.  I can view these “lost funds” as the natural passage of wealth from one person to another.  Perhaps my “foolishness” bought a larger portion of fish for a family’s dinner, or a new pair of flip-flops, or a couple of nice icy cold beers for some mates.  I’d gladly donate to the good living of another human being, so why see this as an injustice inflicted upon me as a victim?  Why stress when I can smile, knowing I have channelled some of the generosity bequeathed to me onto another equally deserving soul?  I mean, what did I do to deserve all my privilege and wealth?  I was simply born into the right family on the right soil.  I can choose to see all of this as I like.  At the end of the day, we are on this epic adventure to take advantage of our blessings.  Why not allow others to do so as well?  Why not just accept that a tax of our privilege will sometimes be added to the price?  I can choose to pay this tax with gratitude and grace or in resentment and cynical thoughts of others.  Seems obvious which option is the wiser.

Let us not forget, also, where our money usually goes.  How much of my wealth has poured into insurance companies, earth-defiling food giants, money-hungry pharmaceutics, Amazon, and the rest of the profiteers of our culture?  Hell, I donate to causes I don’t agree with every day.  Is the man on the beach with a box of jewellery really an enemy to be fended off with a firm and dismissive hand?  Is the mother selling sarongs the one deserving a suspicious eye?  The criminals of greed and environmental destruction fill up my fuel tank, stock my fridge, and claim to sell me health.  I never bat an eye at the wealth I send their way.  Why travel the world and build defences against the common people working to feed mouths and keep a safe bed? 

In the end, the true currency in life is Time.  We all get to decide how we spend it.  Do I want to spend mine trying to figure out if I got a good deal on that ride to the beach?  If that beggar was putting on a show?  If my friend paid less for the boat ride than I did?  Do I really care if I lose $1.35 on those bananas?  Does it matter what other people tip?  Do I want to spend these quickly-passing days pondering these ego-serving, penny-pinching questions?  Um, nope.  Not one bit.  As “westerners” we do not need to be so defensive, so poised to fend off a con.  Time moves too quickly to cling to our dollars.  Life’s moments are too fleeting to spend on the run.  Sounds noble, yes?  If only it were this easy…

And that is the other half of the Indonesian flag.  Courage.  It’s the other crucial piece of this plan.  It’s all good and well to adopt a philosophical position, but the challenge is in living and breathing its truth. The real contest is to tame the ego, to unlearn the defences, and to retrain the old brain to think new thoughts.  It takes Courage to be a fool.  It’s a vulnerability braver than you’d think.  We are fed a lot of warnings, alerted to all the risks, and cautioned against so many steps out in the wide world.  We “westerners” absorb these threats deeply into our instincts.  It’s how the first-world rolls.  Caution becomes our native state, a bit difficult to extract.  But when you are audacious enough to be the wise fool, you open yourself to receiving perks that are not offered on the traveller websites.  When you are Courageous enough conduct yourself with Purity of Intention, you purchase a travel package that includes much more.  You buy a lighter heart, a sense of contribution, and an inner quite broad enough to allow the wakeful mind to truly see the passing world around us and the splendid path unfolding at our feet. 

So, with each onslaught of vendors, each juncture of financial consideration, I’ll aspire to be the courageous fool.  When given the choice to assume the better or worse in someone, I will do my best to choose the former- protective defences be damned!  And when I find myself on the “wrong” end of fairness, I’ll endeavour to see the situation with generosity and the fairness of a broader scope.  Whatever confrontations I find myself in, whatever triggers send me reaching for the big guns, I’ll try to lead with this Indonesian Purity of Intention and gratefully accept whatever comes.