Author: Kirin Taylor

I have been in Thailand for exactly 367 days now. Lately I count them like a kid waiting on Christmas because now I’m waiting on home. When I decided to pack my life into boxes and leave them in the darkness collecting dust, my purpose was to leave home, leave church, leave my family, leave anything that had any influence over who I am or how I live. I wanted to break apart from the world I grew up in and find myself all on my own.

I recently read a book called The Four Agreements in which the author, Don Miguel Ruiz, discusses the issue of being ourselves without any influence from others. He states that from the very moment we are born, our behavior, values, everything we believe in or don’t believe in is influenced by the expectations of the world. We live our lives as who we should be, but not as who we are, so I embarked on this journey to answer a question of great importance: Who am I when the world’s not watching?

I’m not writing this post to tell you who I am, rather, I am writing to tell you what I’ve learned. The Four Agreements have had a considerable impact on how I live and think. That being said, I’ll let Mr.Ruiz explain. The following are the quotes from The Four Agreements that I have found most life-changing.

“If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.”

“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”

“Also, go inside and listen to your body, because your body will never lie to you. Your mind will play tricks, but the way you feel in your heart, in your guts, is the truth.”

“We are so well trained that we are our own domesticator. We are an autodomesticated animal. We can now domesticate ourselves according to the same belief system we were given, and using the same system of punishment and reward. We punish ourselves when we don’t follow the rules according to our belief system; we reward ourselves when we are the “good boy” or “good girl”.”

“You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

The truth is I think I knew who I was before I came to Thailand. What I actually learned here is to love and accept myself. I am emotional, but I used to let my emotions rule me. Now I realize that emotions are fleeting, and rather than drowning in the ocean of my own heart, it is best to allow myself to feel the waves as they come, and then let them go. This year has been hard. I have loved people, and I have lost people. As each blow hit me this year and left scars on my heart, I’ve questioned whether the universe was trying to hurt me to see how much I could take. It was selfish to think that way. Nothing that happened was about me at all. Regardless, every challenge I’ve faced this year taught me one thing: acceptance.
In 32 days, I’ll get on a plane. I’ll walk down the long hallway, strap into my seat, and stare out the window as this journey ends and another begins. I will leave this place behind, and I will return home with more than just the knowledge of who I am and the ability to love myself for just that. I’m going home with freedom.

I saw her from a distance. I was walking along a sidewalk in Bali when I noticed the skinny and frail woman in tattered clothing sitting beside the street with a young daughter. I reached for my wallet, and as I approached her, I thumbed through the bills. I passed the larger bills, and settled on a crinkled twenty thousand rupiah bill. As I continued my journey after handing her the bill, a thought struck me. What will twenty thousand rupiah buy? That is barely even enough for a bottle of water. I began an internal argument with myself. Others will surely pass and give her more money, I thought. What if they don’t? You can’t rely on others to fulfill your purpose. At this thought I immediately turned around. I fetched the largest bill in my wallet. I passed an area of sidewalk where flowers had fallen from a tree and chose the cleanest flower. I handed the woman the one hundred thousand rupiah bill and placed the flower in the palm of her daughter’s tiny hand. The woman immediately clasped her hands together and made bowing gestures, a thank you. She smiled and looked into my eyes and reached out for my hands. She held them in her own and continued the bowing gestures.

The day before I encountered this woman, I had the pleasure of touring around with a Balinese man who eagerly shared his wisdom with me. “Things are easy to say, but difficult to prove,” He said. I have known for a very long time that my purpose in life is to make a difference in the lives of others. It is easy to claim that spreading love and peace, and helping those in need is the life that I desire. It is harder to sleep on the dirt floor of an orphanage in the slums of southern India. It is harder to bathe in a bucket. It is harder to share the squat toilet with bugs. It is harder to leave behind family to seek out the needy around the world. “It is hard to do action,” he said, “but if you try, better one than zero.”

This is the life I dream of. I want to help others. I want to be challenged and pushed out of my comfort zones. I want experiences that will change me and continue to expand the deepest corners of my heart. I want to become my highest self. I want to give others the love and help that will do the same for them. I am only one, but if I try, one is better than zero.

This morning I arrived by train in Thung Song, the city that will be my home for a year. Before I boarded the train last night, I had to say goodbye to the most amazing people I have ever known. In just one whirlwind of a month, they became the closest friends I have ever had and together we made the best memories of our lives. So, despite the deceptive title, this post is all about them.

Bethany was my first friend in Thailand. She is the type of person that you meet and it only takes one conversation for you to feel like you’ve known her forever. She is clever, and thinks of brilliant things like pouring the alcohol into capped water bottles so that we can swim in the ocean and get drunk at the same time. She is reckless and daring. On the day I rode on the back of the motorcycle and stretched my arms out like wings to feel the wind, I felt a lot like Bethany. For a month, Bethany and I shared a room together, but yesterday she left Soi Sam Sam a few hours before me to move 18 hours away, so I hugged her tight and tried to hold back tears as I walked toward the wooden table and tried to forget how hard goodbyes are.

~ ~ ~

Fuck it. That’s what Anais taught me. Insecurity is possibly my biggest fault, and after repeating those two words like a mantra every time insecurity tried to hold me back, I feel my true self surfacing more and more. For now, I only dance on tables and flirt with guys and feel completely free when I am drunk, but Anais taught me that the alcohol only frees the real me from its shell. Sometimes there won’t be Sang Som and Chang to let the girl trapped inside of me loose, but it won’t matter because she deserves to dance and flirt and be free no matter what. Thank you, Anais, for coaxing my true self out of her hiding place.

~ ~ ~

Laura is so special and unique that it is hard for me to think of how to describe her and do her justice with my words. She is hilarious and her laugh is infectious. She tilts back her head and her blond curls shake and the pure joy on her face circulates around to everyone in seconds. I think my favorite memory with Laura is dancing our asses off together at The Blue Monkey because as we were swinging our hips and spinning each other in circles with huge grins on our faces, I realized that it was the first time I felt fully free and fully alive.

~ ~ ~

Nick is the guy grasping the cigarette at the corner of his crooked smile as he plots how he can either A. make everyone laugh until they piss themselves or B. just fuck with everyone’s heads for his own personal enjoyment. He sees the good in everyone and forgives the bad with compassion. He knows that it is better to learn to see life through someone else’s perspective than to judge anyone. When Nick is sober, he is who I am when I am drunk. He is beautifully, genuinely wild and alive and it doesn’t take Sang Som or Chang or anything for him to be that way. He just is.

~ ~ ~

The reason why I called this post “Home” is because I came to Thailand searching for a home that felt more like home than where I came from. I have learned since being here that home isn’t a place on a map or a building with an address. It’s just being with the people you love who love you back. The people who love to make you laugh, hold you when you cry, and hate to watch you hurt. I called this post “Home” because I want to go home, not to the states, just home to my people. I miss you all!

*Disclaimer: The following statement is completely false and was used for creative purposes only.

“Sometimes there won’t be Sang Som and Chang”  <—False. There will ALWAYS be Sang Som and Chang bitches! =b

“Girl and boy sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes loves. Then comes marriage. Then comes a baby in a baby carriage.” Little girls ran around the fields of my elementary school chanting the rhyme in high pitches.

Even from childhood, we are groomed into the role of wife and mother. Without realizing it, we are led down a path that looks the same for us all. For some women this is the picture of a perfect life, but when I close my eyes and imagine myself in this role, it’s fucking frightening.

I spent a long time living my life based on what ifs. What if I never meet someone? What if I don’t or can’t have a kid? The question that inspired me to change my life, however, was the most important. What if I don’t want any of this?So…sometime between my junior year of college and post-graduation, I made up my mind on how I was going to approach love, life, and all the rest. My solution? Fuck it. If I find someone, great. If I don’t, that can still be great too. If I get pregnant one day, I’ll probably cry and panic at first, but I’ll love my kid more than anything in the world. I decided that I don’t need a single person to make or break my happiness, and it might have been the single greatest epiphany I have ever had in my life.

Love, marriage, babies: I once thought I wanted that life, but some time away showed me that it was simply the only life I knew. However, it was not the only option. I don’t want to own a house and host play dates. I want to pack bags and leave and never come back. I want to run towards exotic parts of the world, towards life changing experiences, towards amazing people, wild and blissfully lost, just like me.

According to travel writer and adventuress, Freya Stark, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” All of my respect to Ms. Stark, but I believe the exact opposite. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent much of my life searching for people like me. People who cannot ignore the itch to wander about some unknown place, to do things they’ve never done, to risk everything for the pleasure of truly living. People who, like me, have realized that there has got to be more to life and have set out on a journey to discover it.

I haven’t spent  a day alone in Thailand. We sit on beaches and around tables, and we share stories and drinks and laughs. We raise our middle fingers to mortgages and marriages, and we raise our glasses to adventure. We’ve left behind the naysayers and the others who could not muster the courage to run after this life. We’ve found each other and we hold on tight. We close our eyes, take a deep breath, and jump off the edge fear and all.

What I’ve learned here in the land of smiles is that the pleasantest sensation in the world is not being alone on an unknown journey. It is finding like-minded people who wander the streets and jungles of foreign places and wonder about the secrets of the world. And after all the years of failed friendships and fruitless searches, I’ve found my people.

I was staring at the ceiling in darkness when I first noticed it, the lump in my throat. Then my stomach began to turn and the words crossed my mind involuntarily, God, please give me the strength and courage to do this. I’m so scared.

Some say that the hardest part of any journey is deciding to go. I politely disagree. Anyone can decide to go somewhere, and then change his or her mind very easily. I think the hardest part is getting on the plane. You wander down the hallway that feels infinitely long until you finally step into the plane. You find your seat, strap in, and stare out of the oval window. The plane begins to move faster and faster until you feel your stomach drop and you’re not on the ground anymore. It’s in that moment when the wheels and the pavement part that you’ve truly departed, commenced your journey. There’s no changing your mind, no deciding not to go. You’re already gone. The hardest part is over.

Tomorrow I am getting on a plane. I won’t play it cool and pretend to be perfectly fearless. I am not, in fact, I am terrified and excited all at once. The business of journeying is quite a scary and simultaneously amazing thing, after all. It takes leaving behind your home, loved ones, and all things familiar and comfortable for the unknown. I believe it is worth these sacrifices because journeys can change you like little else can. It will be a brilliant adventure and an unbelievable challenge, but above all it will be worthwhile.

Tomorrow I’ll cry a little (or a lot…lol) and hug my family goodbye. I’ll still be scared, but I’ll go anyway because maybe in any situation in life the hardest part is not making a decision. It’s recognizing that you’re scared and doing it anyway, not deciding to do it, and not saying you’ll do it. It’s actually doing it.