I sat on a third class train rumbling towards Lopburi, Thailand.  There was no air conditioning, but the windows were rolled all the way down, and outside flat green rice fields stretched all the way to darker green mountains in the distance.

Opposite me was a 77 year old rice farmer from northern Thailand, who spoke unusually good English.  After exchanging the usual traveler pleasantries - where are you from, where are you going, etc. - the man had pulled out a tourist brochure and given it to me.  It was for his province, he said.  

“You read this, this is for you.  You keep it.  Very beautiful, look.”  He turned the pages for me. “Beautiful waterfall, very beautiful, maybe later you visit here."

“Oh, maybe I will, you can go hiking here?”  I tried to remember the Thai word for beautiful, “Suay?"  In Thai it sounded like a question.

While I browsed the brochure, he reached into his backpack again and found a plastic jeweled pin in the shape of a Thai character.  

“I pray for my King,” he said. 

We’d just come from Bangkok, and I’d seen the crowds of Thais, dressed in black, paying their respects to the recently deceased King at the Grand Palace.

“I pray for my King,” he repeated, taking off his hat to show me he’d shaved his head.  “This is symbol of King, Thai character, number nine."

“Gâo,” I said.

“Yes, gâo, number nine, King number nine.  You like?  Souvenir for my daughter."

He seemed delighted at my attempts to use my very limited Thai vocabulary, so I started asking for translations, which prompted a spontaneous language lesson lasting the rest of my two hour trip.  I learned all the numbers up to 100.  I learned the words for monkey, “ling," and elephant, "chang," and rice, “khâaw."

“Where you go, lots of monkeys, I call it ‘ling' city, monkey city.  Beware, they will…” He grabbed the strap of my backpack.  “Wear on front!  If they try to take it, you tell them, ‘mei dii,' bad.”  We both laughed.

Whenever a vendor would pass our seats, he would point out what they were selling and tell me how much.  "Naam yen, cold water, 20 bhat.  And orange juice, orange juice is nam sòm.  Dried fish, 20 bhat, dii sìp bhat.  Chinese noodle, only 10 bhat.  You like Chinese noodle?  You like Pad Thai, Thai noodle?"

As if to explain why he was being so friendly, the farmer told me his philosophy on people. We're really all the same, no matter where we come from.

"I say, oh you from Germany, you my friend, you from USA, you my friend.  We are all the same."

It was exactly what the monk from my Bangkok meditation class had said.  Sure we all have different backgrounds, we live in different circumstances, and we have different genetics, but underneath we're all just human.  We deal with similar struggles, non of us are perfect, and we all want to be happy.  

Have you ever struggled secretly because you thought other people just wouldn't understand your problems?  Felt like no one could relate to what you're going through? Felt like you didn't fit in because your life and circumstances were fundamentally different from those of the people around you?

Well let me tell you something (and remind myself too): you are not a unique snowflake. You are 99.5 percent the same as everyone else.  And thinking you are unique is the norm. Everyone who's struggling to be happy thinks they're different from everyone else.   Maybe we don't consciously make the decision to think that way, but it unconsciously sneaks into our thinking anyway.  Don't listen to those thoughts, you are not alone!

I know for a long time I didn't really like the idea of being "normal."  But normal is not boring.  Normal can be really wonderful.  It means we can reach out and relate to others. It means people have already dealt with our problems and solved them.

When the train conductor announced that Lopburi was next, I started to get up.  "Sà wàt dii khâ," I said.   The farmer corrected me, and made me re-do my greeting with the proper "wâi" bow.  And some parting words:

"In Thailand, people are friendly, but they don’t speak English.  If you learn Thai, you can go anywhere."

-  Claire

Note: I do not take responsibility for the accuracy of any statistics in this post :-)

Someone I met in at a hostel in Chiang Mai, of all places, shook me awake and inspired me to start blogging again.  "I guess we’re more alike than I thought," they told me after reading a few posts.  Then they told me their own story very similar to mine.  That’s why I’m writing and sharing my experiences.  Because no one ever talks about this mental health stuff, but it speaks to so many people.  

I don’t really care if I build a huge online following or not.  If you’ve stumbled upon my little corner of the internet by accident then that’s great!  But if my only readers are friends, people who think they know me, then I hope what I’m writing helps to start a real conversation.  Maybe one that’s really uncomfortable, because those are the best!

Love you all!

- Claire 

It’s such a strange contrast looking out at Bangkok’s skyline and listening to Buddhist monks chanting in the background.  From the top of Wat Saket, the Golden Mount, this city looks like it’s exploding, growing out of control.  Yet the underlying Buddhist philosophy of (the majority of) its people is one of calm and meditation.  I can spot the red and gold roof of a temple in almost every direction, little sanctuaries amidst the chaos.  All of it reminds me of a movie I watched in my high school World Religions class - Baraka - which didn’t have any narration or dialogue, just beautiful footage of traffic jams, skyscrapers, cathedral windows, and the monks ringing gongs.

Maybe mindfulness is exactly how the Thais’ are able to deal with this city’s craziness?

A few weeks ago, I attended a beginners meditation class at the International Meditation Center, Wat Mahathatu, Section 5.  We weren’t hidden away on top of a mountain in the middle of a forest somewhere, we were smack in the middle of Bangkok.

Inside the monastery were rows of white buildings with small trees in front of them, and wide pathways that were strangely deserted apart from the cats, sunning themselves on the pavement.  My friend and I found our way to Section 5, descended a small staircase and ducked into a tiny doorway to get inside.  

There were four people total in our class.  We each took a cushion and when everyone was seated, our friendly orange-clad teacher welcomed us and gave us an introduction to meditation.  Don't worry about whether you're doing it right or not, he said.  We started out sitting, for about half an hour.  I tried to focus on my breath, but after a while all I could think about was how my foot was going to sleep.  I didn't want to disturb anyone by moving around, but in the end I had to stretch my legs, then went back sitting cross legged.  It wasn't particularly comfortable.  I'd meditated before, but never for this long I guess.

Next we tried walking meditation, walking back and forth across the tiny basement room very slowly, one step at a time.  Rising, moving, treading, rising, moving, treading.  Standing standing standing, turning, turning, turning.  We had to keep our eyes open for this one so we didn't bump into anything.  We did one more session of sitting meditation afterward, and then we chatted with the monk.

"We're all the same, you, me, everyone else," he said. "It doesn't matter if you are Buddhist or Christian or Muslim, whatever, you can still practice being mindful."

Very wise!  What I appreciate most about mindfulness is that it gives me the ability to observe my emotions and thoughts without being attached to them.  "Oh, I'm putting myself down again," I can think.  "That's kind of mean."  You realize that you're thoughts are just thoughts, and not necessarily the truth.  And that's empowering, because you can control your thoughts, even when you can't change the situation.  This is all in an ideal world of course, and the more runaway thoughts you have the harder it is to be mindful.  But it's still something to strive for.

​- Claire