Tibet
This is not how I normally tell this story. Usually, this story is all about ME and how I was the one who possibly could have died 1,000 feet below Mount Everest base camp, in a house of strangers who did more for me in one night than I have done for most others my entire lifetime, and the only thing I did for them was destroy their house. But in the current situation, this story needs to be told differently. This story needs to be about culture and race and the God-given right of ALL people to pursue their own destinies and happiness in this world, without crushing oppression and insurmountable obstacles. A story of all of us, throughout this world, our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our souls, shutting down because we can no longer breathe. What we need to live is no longer available, Whether we realize it or not, we are dying. And the help that we need is not in the money we carry nor in the things that we own, but in the kindness, compassion, and unflinching generosity of strangers. This is the story of Tibet.
I did almost die in Tibet. I did also make it to Mount Everest base camp, although I can not remember taking the greatest picture of my life. I can remember the wind. I can not remember clambering out of the little brown box van in order to throw up just ten feet from the open door. I can remember Tenzin, our Tibetan guide, telling me and the others that we would not be able to spend the night at Everest base camp because I was too sick and needed oxygen and me, trying very feebly, to tell Tenzin I was fine and not too worry. I can not remember Tenzin talking to Lynn, my Taiwanese friend on this adventure, about how I was suffering from altitude sickness and if we did not go down the mountain 1,000 feet and stay at a families house for the night I could suffer brain damage and possibly die. I can remember crawling into a bed at the families house and then proceeding to lose all control of my bodily functions, creating a scene not even the worst horror films would want to replicate. Lastly, I can remember crying, saying, “I am sorry. I am sorry.”, as Lynn stroked my hair and I was throwing up, all at the same time.
The night gets worse, way worse, before it gets better, but this story is not about one. It is about many. It is about the grace of humanity and to live compassion. It is about sacrifice and caring for strangers, because we are all brothers and sisters. It is about friendship and community, and what it means to live. It is about a family, a husband and a wife and a small child, welcoming a stranger and his companions into their two-story, hand-built, mud brick home at the top of the world, offering the only bowl of rice the family would eat that day and ALL of the oxygen supply for the ENTIRE year to a total stranger they would never see again and whom they knew would NOT rest easy. This is the story of Tibet.
Tibet is a magical place. A place of unparalleled natural beauty, mysticism, art, culture and beliefs, and an unfathomable pilgrimage I will never be able to comprehend. When I visited Tibet, all I wanted to see was the beauty and romance and mysticism that are certainly abundant in such a place, but Tibet is SO much more. It is also a place of heartbreak, of divided families, of paranoia, of guards with machine guns, of a culture that is dying and not being allowed to be passed down to the younger generations, a race being eliminated and replaced with shopping malls and iPhones. Tibet is a place of misery and suffering because the people live under an oppression that is suffocating. Tibet is dying. Maybe it has already died.
But there is resilience in this land as well. I have never met a people who have so little (possessions) and offer so much. I have never felt people smile so much as I did in Tibet. To me, as an American, I could not believe the poverty I witnessed as a tourist. How do these people survive? After a month in this land, as a friend, I could not believe the happiness these people experienced in things I might not even notice. How do I survive?
I did almost die in Tibet. This is true. But looking back, in the context of things happening now in the world, I also learned to live in Tibet. I am not quite certain how to tie this story into how I am feeling about the world today, but there is something. You might need to search your own heart and soul, but we need each other. We need cultures. We need differences. We need races and beliefs and religions and perspectives. We need to learn to live with smiles that can be felt and generosity and compassion that is not only able to save the life of one of us, but ALL of us.
In Tibet, rock cairns represent prayers sent to the heavens. I offer this prayer; a peace and a love within each of us, for each of us. Amen.
