Choice

I am sitting in Bahrain airport and I have just written a post about non-attachment and how my week has been about learning lessons of letting go. As I sit here and look around me, a woman sits opposite me dressed head to toe in the traditional muslim attire for a female. The full burkha, gloves cover her hands, stockings on her feet, a small window for her eyes.  And I feel guilty or rather ridiculous about what I have just written. I whine about losing my scarf, my phone, about having to change my plans. How they are presenting life lessons for me. Blah blah blah. I feel stupid. This woman clearly does not have the freedom I have. I can’t even imagine how her life compares to mine. She gets up to leave, slowly covering the only area visible, a dark veil drawn over her eyes. And she becomes nothing but a black ghost. Not one ounce of that woman is visible to the outside world. Nothing that defines her as a person. She becomes nothing but a swathe of black cloth.

Witnessing this brings some new perspective to the loss of my favourite scarf, to the changing of my plans, to the loss of my phone. Sure, I can see the lessons in non-attachment, to really and truly let go of my attachment to things and my expectations on plans and people. But I can in this moment be humbled by the freedom that I have, by the unique opportunity I have to be able to chose, to be a person and to be seen by the world. I am not saying that this woman’s life is better or worse than mine. Quite frankly I don’t know. But I realise how easily I can get caught up in my own reality, my own bubble of existence and how sometimes only looking within can make you forget to look up and around every now and again.  And today, I am grateful that I am not doing that through a veil of dark cloth.

So I was going to blog about my last few weeks in Guatemala, or my time in the fabulous New York city, or my adventures that have bought me back to a country I love Nepal. But for now, I can only focus on the woman at the airport. Everything else about my world seems to be pale in comparison, that my decisions of what I am going to do next, where am I going to go, are really my biggest dilemma’s that I have. However with freedom, often can come fear, with opportunity can come challenge, but this is my choice, to be free, to do what I want. And today, I need to remind myself of that black burkha and the alternative to choice.