Midnight Self

Last night I couldn't sleep. I was thinking. I was excited.

I would lay there in bed for about 20 minutes and then get up and walk around while my little head tried to work through the mass of ideas and thoughts that kept on circulating. Then I would lay back down and in a minutes I would be up again walking and thinking. I was to excited to sleep. These thoughts were urgent and they were important.

My entire life I have had nights like these. Nights where the passion and excitement in my mind will not allow my body to sleep. It's almost the same feeling a child has the day before going to Disneyland or on Christmas Eve.

I could be wrong, but I don't feel like I'm alone on this.

Everyone has these nights that give birth to revelations. The best example I can think of is in the movie "Jerry Maguire". In the middle of the night Tom Cruise has a revelation and writes a massive memo and distributes it to all his co-workers at a sports management agency the next day. But that night he wrote, he couldn't sleep. The idea was too important, too urgent. If he slept it would be lost. But after he actualllly gives out the memo, he almost immediately tries to get it back. He wasn't sure about the relevance of its content. He loses his confidence in his idea. Not because he doesn't believe in the idea or concept, but more because he is not sure how others will react to it.

I find that I am very similar to this character. My midnight self is bold, passionate, and confident. My midnight self can literally do everything he thinks up and will do anything in order to see his dreams and passions materialize. You can't talk my midnight self out of much.

But then I eventually go to sleep, and wake up my regular daytime self. And the ideas and revelations I conceived the night before seem so far away and so irrational and unattainable. My daytime self wants to be bold but is too worried about what people think about him. He's worried about his bank account balance. He's worried about all the things the world says he should be worried about. There's no time for revelations with all this going on.

I believe that it would literally change the world if we could somehow make our midnight self and our daytime self one. If we could let our worries and guards down and amplify our passions and revelations... It would be amazing to one night lay in bed not being able to sleep, thinking about an idea and then the next day do everything possible to execute that idea. No matter what the risk: personal, financial, status, and whatever else would fit on that list.

I think we can slowly do this everyday. And for some people it might not be a nightime thing. It might be that when you write your ideas they are so beautiful and real but when you put down the pen, those same ideas seem unattainable. Or maybe when you talk to certain people it evokes a real, urgent passion to do something. But soon after the conversation that passion and urgency fade away and you are back to your regular self worried about regular things that the world has inflicted on you.

I am beginning to believe that our midnight selves are a much more realistic representation of what life should be. The midnight self says, "Get out of my way", "I don't care what you think", "I can and I am going to do this". "It doesnit matter what speed bumps or obstacles come up, this is too important to let go of."

This is such a beautiful idea of how life should be. It leaves us with a blank canvas and no fear or hesitation to pick up the brush and just paint.

Angkor...Almost

Though there are several ways to see the Angkor Temples - the famous temples in northern Cambodia - I decided that I would rent a bike and take a tour by myself. I woke up at 7:30am, and made my way over to the bike rental place. For a grand $1.50, I was able to rent what seemed like a decent bike for the day.

It was quite easy to navigate my way through Siem Reap, the city near Angkor, and make my way to the front gates of Angkor in about 1 hour. The men at the front stand said I needed to buy a ticket and pointed me in the direction I needed to go. As I was enjoying the scenery around the road, I began to hear a funny noise coming from my bike. Before I could even stop to look at it, a loud noise came from my tire and completely deflated. I quickly came to a stop and began to examine my new problem. I couldn't see anything seriously wrong with the tire so I figured it was just a hole in my inner tube.

I was about half way between the ticket office and the front gate and decided that I would make my way to the ticket office and see if there was someone who could help. After about 30 minutes I arrived at the ticket office and the very kind man told me to continue down the road for about 10 minutes and there would be a bike stand. I arrived at the bike stand and the man began to look at it. He immediately showed me a massive split in the tire and with his hands explained that he would have to go into town to buy a new one. So I sat there drinking my water and laughed to myself at the situation. The man eventually made it back after about 20 minutes and very quickly put the new tire and tube on. I payed him $10 dollars and with a smile said goodbye and made my way back to the ticket office.

Its really not that big of a deal, right? Even so, I realized today that my patience has developed immensely since I have left the US. If this situation would have happened a year ago, I would have been on the verge of melting down. Though I wasn't exactly happy about the whole thing, without thinking about it I calmly figured out what to do and within an hour was able to get everything solved.

An hour.

How many times has an hour meant life or death to me? - "I can't stay on this bus one more hour or I am going to go crazy", "If I stay on this plane for another hour I am going to freak out", "Do you seriously expect me to sit through this lecture for an entire hour?"

But really an hour is only an hour. A small hiccup in our lives. I don't think that I have ever realized how insignificant an hour is and even had the patience to understand this until now. I usually go through a day without having to wait for anything and everything happens in the timing I want it to. It's so easy for us to do that. But sometimes situations throw curve balls at us, maybe just to see how we handle it.

For me, it takes a flat tire and an hour to really understand a small change this whole trip has had on me. I am grateful for this and I hope that it continues to work on the other flawed areas of who I am.

The Lepor's hand

I have been having a very difficult time trying to explain my current state of mind concerning my faith in God. For some reason, until yesterday words seems to do no justice to how I have been feeling.

But yesterday I remembered watching a movie in Mongolia after a nice day's work of laying bricks called The Kingdom Of Heaven. The movie was alright. It kinda dragged on a bit but was entertaining. I don't remember the exact scene or even the story line for that matter but I do remember a scene when the mother of the soon-to-be King (then a child) realized that he had leprosy and in that moment she realized that because of this he could not reign as King.

That scene paints a very real picture of the way I have been experiencing my faith for nearly 6 months:

The mother can see the hand and feel the hand, it exists and is very real. There is no way to deny that. But when she touches the hand with a hot needle, the boy cannot feel a thing. He does not move or flinch.

In the same way that the mother can see and feel the hand, I know my faith is real and that the God I worship exists. There is no way to deny that. But as of recent, I feel much more like the boy. With his eyes he can see his hand and with an outside object he can touch it, but inside him at the tips of his fingers, he does not feel a thing. Much similarly, in the bottom of my heart I do not feel my faith. When the hot needle of my faith touches the fingers of my heart, I do not move and I do not flinch.

This is a very foreign thing to me and I know that these things pass, only making one's faith stronger and more real. Its just so odd to be surrounded by the least of the least day in and day out, the true face of God, but still not feel a sense of God in my heart.

As I have written before, a distance in feeling does not always mean a distance in faith and I believe that God is walking next to me and carrying me when I am weak.

I only write this now because I feel it is important to express how we feel with honesty and it wasn't until yesterday that this was possible.

Thank you to all for your amazing support!

Moments

In 10 months, there has been a handfull of times, or moments as I like to call them when I am instantly and overwhelmingly reminded that I am living my dream. That being here is exactly where I am suppose to be and everything becomes peaceful in that moment.

Yesterday I experienced another of these moments.

As I sat on the top of a "junk boat" with the wind blowing in my face and the sun setting in the distance, I watched the seemingly endless and beautiiful islands that make up Ha Long Bay in northern Vietnam slowly glide by. And very softly I thought to myself:

This is my dream.

This country. This boat. These people. This is why I didnt go out to dinner twice that week. This is why I didnt by those jeans.

To be here. To do this.

We are rarely given the opportunity to actually do what our crazy minds think up.

I thank God for this.