Start of a Journey

Leaving home is hard. We get so addicted to our routines, our habits, and our relative feeling of security associated with home that leaving it completely behind us is more than a little daunting. Change is something we sometimes seek, but we often times run from. Indeed, I feel like running from it now.

In a few days, I will be heading on a journey that will last approximately 7 months. I'll be teaching English to college or high school students in the Terengganu Province of Malaysia on a Fulbright Scholarship. People have told me how exciting the opportunity will be and how lucky I am to have the ability to travel for several months while I am still young. Indeed, I am excited and consider myself very lucky to have recieved such an honor. But I can't help approaching the experience of moving to the other side of the world with a bit of... hesitancy.

Allow me to introduce myself a bit. My name is Anita and I live in San Diego, California. I went to a small liberal arts college in Los Angeles called Pitzer College, with only around 1000 students. It's a beautiful campus, a great school and is very liberal-oriented. The school is progressive and my bread and butter during my time there was learning about social and political issues, everything from Asian American rights to US foreign policy to women's rights. I graduated in May 2007 only to learn that the world doesn't think the way I learned in college. The everyday person isn't worrying about why people in developing nations live off US$1 a day or why waste from products like plastic, styrofoam, and even cell phones build up at an exorbinant and unhealthy rate. The everyday person is worried about their job/schoolwork, about their family, about paying their bills this month. Sure, these are valid concerns but it has taken me a while to realize that the everyday person is considered with primarily one thing: themselves.

The Bhavagad Gita, probably the most well-read scripture for the Hindu religion, states that work done for selfish reasons is inferior by far to work done for selfless service. People who work only for selfish reasons, who work only to enjoy the fruits of their labor, will be verily be unhappy. I bring this up for two reasons. First, I have noticed that since my time away from college I seem to have fallen into the trap of the "everyday person", attached to the material world and attached mainly to the things that will further my own self-oriented agenda.

Secondly, I notice that at the dawn of my trip to Malaysia I have the choice to view my trip in one of two ways. I can view it as a means to an end, as a way to impress people with the title of "Fulbright Scholar" on my resume. I can go on this extended stay in Malaysia only thinking about my selfish needs and desires, my need to be thought well of by others. Or, I could think of this trip to Malaysia as a way to "pay it forward". While working as a pharmacy clerk these past months, I've met customers who would yell truely awful things to me or my collegues for things we had no control over sometimes, just because their self-oriented desire was not fulfilled in a timely manner. I've also met pharmacy workers who have gone out of their way to help customers out of their dilemmas for no other reason then they wanted to help. In my trip to Malaysia, I would rather work towards such non-selfish goals, and give the universe some good vibrations. Let me "pay it forward" to the Malaysian school children that I will be working with, giving them knowledge of a language they would truely like to learn better and increase their opportunities in the global world. I want to teach for teaching's sake, not for self-centered means.

Leaving home and everything that you ever know is hard. But I think that in this case, it will be worth the sacrifice.