One World Insight Blog | Douglas "Las" Wengell

“Our Time has Come,” say the Chinese

What makes China so exciting is not so much its epic infrastructure in tangible projects (opposed to financial vaporware), its gigantean size or meteoric rise, but its singular attitude about the future, an attitude quintessentially at the heart of America’s DNA. There’s a confidence and patriotism, a manic energy, a cautious optimism, a sense that, after a “century of humiliation,” as is said here, China’s time has come.

 

Consider that eighty-six percent of the Chinese who believe their country is headed in the right direction, compared with 37 percent of Americans. The majority of the Chinese also believe that it will produce the next Google, while only a third of Americans believe the next big thing will happen on its soil. The reality may be different --  but you can’t deny the loss of American serotonin and testosterone.

 

Such yankee cowboy bravado is at the core of a nation’s vitality and at the heart of America’s economic engine. When anything is possible, the horizon is far and wide, and opportunities great, things happen. It’s intoxicating and self-fulfilling. How many American’s have been inspired by the hope that if you play by the rules and work really hard, anything can happen?

 

Across the political spectrum, Joe and Jane know that rules of the game are stacked against them. The rules have change.

An American Generation Deferred

There was a time, not long ago, when Americans were confident that the next generation would be wealthier, more skilled, better able, prettier, in a better position, happier than the prior one. That’s no longer true by almost every measure. My generation – Gen X – and those after will be the first in American history to witness a declining quality of living as measured by income, wealth and global competitiveness. And this before our engineers-turned-financial wizards single-handedly orchestrated the Great Recession and before Baby Boomers, who road the wing of postwar prosperity, begin their epic retirement, since they can’t afford to.

 

When I look at my life and those aspiring Americans around me – peers, friends, associates, fancy MBAs, interns, fellow travelers – there is a pattern suggesting a new reality. Few have worked at one job longer than a few years. Few have the time or resources to dig into other non-work aspects of their life – family, hobbies, travel. A huge number are freelancers of one sort or another, stitching together full-time work and taking it as it comes. Savings and retirement are worthy – but who can afford it? Legions of educated women have delayed family, whether because of a missing man or out of necessity (and what if things don’t work out?)  Many friends don’t think twice about receiving financial help from their family and more college graduates move home after graduation.

 

The future is too uncertain. It’s a generation deferred.

Testosterone Starved Americans

Every four years, the Pew Center and the Council on Foreign Relations conduct a survey called, simply, “America’s Place in the World,” which tracks the sentiment of the public and thought leaders. A new one was released this month and, while just a survey, the results tell a story of a nation short on testosterone.

 

· 53% say that China is a major threat and 44% of the public now think that China is the world’s leading economic power (never mind that the U.S. economy is three times as large.)

 

· For the first time in 40 years, about half of the general public agree that the U.S. should “mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own” and only 10% think that America should make it a priority to promote democracy abroad, a far cry from September 2001’s 44 percent.

 

· Only 21% consider defending human rights a priority (down from 43%); and only 35% think America should strive to improve living standards in developing countries.

 

Viagra anyone? Or Prozac? Both of which are made in the U.S.A, if that’s any consolation.

America: Harder to Climb and Further to Fall

The future is catching up with the present. The American psyche is – or was – obsessed with consumption paid for by debt – in other words, live today at the cost of tomorrow.  It’s a me household and a me budget deficit. Production, savings and innovation are deferred for a nether future. We’ll pay for it after the party. Except what happens then and who takes the hit?

 

With a sordid history emblazed upon the memory of the older Chinese, the nation feels they can only move up. America has already achieved so much. It’s gotten rich and drunk with self-importance. It’s harder to climb and further to fall.

A Vision of One World

Global change will require international cooperation in ways unprecedented. A unilateral model of democracy and capitalism may need to coexist with something else not yet realized.  National self-interest will have to live with collective, global needs. The twentieth century saw the rise of global organizations such as the UN, NATO, WTO – but their power is limited relative to the sovereign state.

The Copenhagen summit was a painful reminder of the daunting challenge of world-wide norms and initiatives. The power of the American president is limited, as is the UN Security Council. Yet the problems facing this One World are global in scope. Someone’s problem is everyone’s problem, as U.S. West coast pollution is traced to Chinese factories. There’s no precedent. It’s a bold new era with far more questions and conundrums than answers and pathways forward.

Interesting times? Most certainly.

“Bet Against the American Dream” – aka, The Middle Class Short

This American Life, a U.S. public radio weekly, concluded a recent radio show with a Broadway parody distilling today’s robber barren era to its essence. Have a listen and  laugh (or cry):

Bet Against the American Dream from Alexander Hotz on Vimeo.

The top of the economic food chain has in effect shorted the middle class, and won. The losers in those bets weren’t Goldman Sachs investors -- they were millions of hard working Americans who bought into the American Dream, only to find it had been replaced by what looks more like House-takes-all ponzy scheme.

With the urgency of the financial crisis passing, the grim results surface: the largest transfer of wealth ever witnessed. Those at the top are intact and richer, those in the middle a few notches lower.  The American middle has been shrinking for at least 30 years and real wages stagnant when adjusted for inflation. Thirty years ago, top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of 30 times what their workers did –  now they make 300 times. Between 2000 and 2008, the poverty rate in the suburbs of the largest metro areas in the U.S. grew by 25 percent – making these suburbs home to the country's largest and fastest-growing segment of the poor.

The American Dream used to be about hark work, perseverance, education, but the system appears rigged. Even the likes of establishment thinking is admitting this. In a new paper by The Hamilton Project, an economic think tank founded by Treasure-Citibank titan Robert Rubin, it argues that “the American tradition of expanding opportunity from one generation to the next is at risk because we are failing to make the necessary investments in human, physical, and environmental capital.”

The need to reorganize our financial system goes beyond the updating financial regulations. It goes to the heart of who we are as a nation, and whether we are going to stop sliding toward a Third World paradigm of two classes: those at the bottom and those at the top. “At least in an actual casino, the damage is contained to gamblers,” wrote financial journalist Roger Lowenstein.

 

One World Global Air Traffic Video

The Iceland volcano halted flights across Europe and the Atlantic, a humble reminder that  our lives are still at the pleasure of nature. Whether it’s people, cargo or digital bits, our planet gets smaller by the day. Check out this stunning video of global air traffic patterns, and note the seemingly lost continent of Africa.

Mandarin becoming the new French and German

A telling sign of American education is the instruction of foreign language. The world is fast becoming global and, while English will continue to be the dominant language into the twenty-first century, the precipitous rise of China has not much impacted pedagogy.   The big three foreign languages – Spanish, German and French – remain the primary options on the curriculum menu – provided they can be offered at all. Mandarin is on offer at a mere 4 percent of future-oriented American schools.

We would be wise to do away with German and French altogether and begin a massive campaign to teach our young Mandarin – giving them and America the advantage it will reap well into the future. Yet it’s the Chinese taking the initiative.

Excerpts from a New York Times piece, January 21, 2010, written by Sam Dillon.

Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese

WASHINGTON — Thousands of public schools stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade, according to a government-financed survey — dismal news for a nation that needs more linguists to conduct its global business and diplomacy.

But another contrary trend has educators and policy makers abuzz: a rush by schools in all parts of America to offer instruction in Chinese.

Some schools are paying for Chinese classes on their own, but hundreds are getting some help. The Chinese government is sending teachers from China to schools all over the world — and paying part of their salaries.

No one keeps an exact count, but rough calculations based on the government’s survey suggest that perhaps 1,600 American public and private schools are teaching Chinese, up from 300 or so a decade ago. And the numbers are growing exponentially.

Among America’s approximately 27,500 middle and high schools offering at least one foreign language, the proportion offering Chinese rose to 4 percent, from 1 percent, from 1997 to 2008.

“It’s really changing the language education landscape of this country,” said Nancy C. Rhodes, a director at the center and co-author of the survey.

“We’ve all been surprised that in such a short time Chinese would grow to surpass A.P. German,” Mr. Packer said.

A decade ago, most of the schools with Chinese programs were on the East and West Coasts. But in recent years, many schools have started Chinese programs in heartland states, including Ohio and Illinois in the Midwest, Texas and Georgia in the South, and Colorado and Utah in the Rocky Mountain West.

America has had the study of a foreign language grow before, only to see the bubble burst. Many schools began teaching Japanese in the 1980s, after Japan emerged as an economic rival. But thousands have dropped the language, the survey found.

Japanese is not the only language that has declined. Thousands of schools that offered French, German or Russian have stopped teaching those languages, too, the survey found.

Experts said several factors were fueling the surge in Chinese. Parents, students and educators recognize China’s emergence as an important country and believe that fluency in its language can open opportunities.

“Chinese is really taking root,” she said. Starting this fall, Jackson High will begin phasing out its German program, she said.

Arriving back in the United States

Arriving back in the United States from Tokyo in March, I knew there would be some shock and adjustment ahead of me. Some say returning home is the hardest part. There is some truth to that.

Within the first few hours, after landing at SFO, I hopped onto an aging rail car with stained carpets and dirtied windows known as the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Once the envy of the country, new and modern, compared to Singapore and Hong Kong and elsewhere, it felt outdated and stuffy. I thought of Thomas Friedman’s pithy summary that we have become “The United States of Deferred Maintenance,” whilst China is becoming “The People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification”. It saves, invests and builds; we spend, borrow and patch.

 Just visit LAX or JFK – cramped, dark, like an aging world fair local – and compare it to a modern Asian international airport. It was once the envy of the world; now it’s trying to hide its age with cosmetic fixes. In some ways, LAX is representative of America: living off prior investments and success, drawing down principle, and too short-sited or conceited to make investments in its future.

 When the train passed through Oakland, I paid witness to a racial incident between an African American young woman and a spiffy business man. Slurs were wielded. Many in the train car walked to another. The tension was palpable. Nearly eight months traveling in Asia, the only time I felt this kind of tension was in Lhasa, Tibet, among the locals and the Han Chinese. Racism exists everywhere, of course; what struck me was how palpable it was back in the States, despite all the political correctness, and here I was in the “progressive” region of Northern California.

 The first few times in the American supermarket was disconcerting. It is a super in every way. Rows upon rows of cereals (all with essentially the same ingredients, corn and corn sugar), frozen foods, potato chips and snack foods.  Not just one variety but tens of them, fully stocked, the store gigantic and, not unusual, mostly empty. You just don’t see this in Asia. What struck out was the consumption, the choices, the inefficiencies, the saturation of all things material.

 

Other impressions over the last few weeks: How expensive it is to live and eat in America; the diversity of our democracy; the isolated dens of individualism; the conspicuous wealth along side poverty; the comfort obliviousness living inside a superpower nation; the superficial television news and lack of global curiosity; the rise of  aggressive, hostile, reality denial politics who want to “take back” America, its racial undertones unmistakable.

 But then there are the upsides. The diversity, the open mindedness, the anything-is-possible ethos, the lack of government involvement; the freedom to live dreams independent of tradition and expectation; the world class research centers like Berkeley and Stanford; the judicial order and material wealth; the availability of most anything; the capitalist model, with its variety of goods at competitive prices.

 One World. Despite all our faults, America is a benchmark, Washington still the epicenter of global leadership. The fear of losing our greatness is, it turns out, as American as apple pie, a paranoid anxiety that goes back to our 1776 independence.

America’s Economic Engine

I ponder the trajectory of emerging markets. The challenges are daunting. It’s a tough and uncertain road. What it is about America’s recipe that is the envy of the world?

 

· Innovation feeders in science and technology; best universities in the world

· risk capital = starting new companies.

· Meritocracy and diversity means anyone can become boss

· Religious zeal for competition and free markets, or mostly free

· Unparallel ability to turn academic theory into practical invention

· Higher education attracts global talent magnet

· Extraordinary dynamism and resilience to get back up and try again

· Regional, bottom up solutions

The Rise of the Rest

America has always assumed that the world would come to our banks, speak our language and list on our stock exchanges. Our threshold for understanding other cultures is low. We’re too often convinced we are “number one” George W. Bush’s conceit was its poster child, and cost us more in “brand equity” than we care to admit.

 

The old world was capital and labor. Today’s competitive advantage – and our biggest strength –  is realizing new ideas.  One economist is calling the twenty-first century the third industrial revolution. The first was the shift of labor from farms to factories; the second was the transition from manufacturing to services; the next is the emergence of a flat world, where national boundaries fall, brands go global and workers compete irrespective of geography.

 

We can no longer coast on the vapors of post-war 1950s hegemony. While we were partying, or trying to get rich the easy way, the world changed. Globalization is here.

“My fellow Americans: We are not who we think we are.”

So said Thomas Freedom in Hot, Flat and Crowded.

 “Our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We have been consuming too much, saving too little, studying too laxly, and investing not nearly enough. And our political institutions are also the institutions we have to overcome.”

 I met a retired French business guy in Shanghai who was putting a thirty year endnote on his East Asia travels from the 1960s. He describes how, on his return to France, he and his spouse were greeted by their town’s mayor and encouraged to have children, buy a house and join the community. His employer was equally committed. I have heard other variations of this story from plenty of American baby boomers, too.

 

This is not to say that this is the way we should live. But it’s a nice option for those not skilled in “Brand Me” self-promotion and life-long skill development. It’s that in our rush to be free of 1950s conformity, in our quest to realize our potential, to put individualism ahead of all else, the world has changed. It’s time we look up and outward.

Fellow Woman Warrior Traveler

In Cambodia met Megan, from the UK, who recently traveled solo through Pakistan. Her stories put my sense of adventure in perspective. Here she is posing with American soldiers in Pakistan (notice the woman warrior on the Megan’s left).

Traveler: Become Childlike

Some musings today on the benefits of travel in foreign lands.  The only comparison to the experience is seeing the world through the eyes of a child, rediscovering the things that we forget to see as adults.

 

The mundane becomes magical. Take ordering food, catching a bus, crossing the street, using the toilet, exploring a food market, noting the music at the restaurant, inhaling new smells, washing cloths in a hostel sink, bargaining with a taxi driver. Like a child, you piece together the world to figure out how it works. Your whole existence becomes a series of guesses, impressions, and little lessons.

 

Its not always “fun.”  You’re vulnerable. When you’re tired and defenses down, you come face to face with your internal resources, or lack there of.

 

You may be excited, bored, cranky, confused, desperate and dazzled all within one day. Just like a baby.

 

The best part. None of this requires much money. It’s much more about taking the plunge and showing up.

The Anxious American

Viewing the United States from Asia, it’s painfully clear that living in America can be dangerous to your health. Insecurity around jobs and America’s future is as high as ever. Citizens morphined by consumption rather than demanding systematic change. The threat of China and India and the “rise of the rest” immobilizes instead of emboldening  Washington. We are anxious that we may be losing our edge, but reform even after Obama is elusive.

There is no question that America’s dynamic economic boom-and-busts engine tears at the fabric of stability, family formation and long-term health. American have no credible social safety net.

Other than family and friends,  you’re on your own.

Traveler: Where are all the Americans?

Too many Americans think extended overseas travel is the exclusive realm of students, dropouts, or the rich.  I am not sure if this is why so few Americans leave its borders, or because we are always on the edge of financial anxiety. And this was well before the financial crisis of 2009.

Too few fail to appreciate the value of visiting other cultures and navigating the world. Travel need not be an escape from life. It can also be a form of education and development. And since we are so work-oriented, I would argue that it makes you a more attractive employee, too..

 

Consider some lessons: independence, flexibility, negotiation, planning, initiative, self-sufficiency and improvisation, to name a few.

 

The reality is that I meet long-term travelers all the time, many traveling for a year or more. They are young and old, singles and couples, men and women, packs and solo pilgrims. Most are traveling on a shoe-string, saved money back home, find odd jobs on the road, but they make it happen. They go for it. Germans, Japanese, Australian, Dutch, Chilean, British, Australians, Chinese.

 

But almost none are American! I am not sure what this says about American culture but I have a feeling it’s not good. So start saving and start planning!

Traveler: Threading

The travel strategy I am practicing is outlined in a cool book I discover, Vagabonding. Rather than have a firm itinerary, you act somewhat spontaneously, moving from place to place, town to village, as the spirit moves you. Zigzags rather than lines. Curves rather than edges. I am reveling in the radical openness and discovery not easily practiced back home, where we quickly acclimate to familiar routines.

Luang Pravang, Laos

Luang Prabang is considered the crown jewel city of Southeast Asia. I can see why. It’s on a hill, surrounded by two rivers and mountains, with small streets and French architecture. Monks walk about. You can walk around the town. As a UNESCO world heritage site, no busses and trucks are allowed. What’s there not to like! PHOTOS.

The lazy days are spent walking about, meeting locals, talking to monks and fellow travelers, and generally getting into respectable trouble.

One memorable night I watch the sunset from a hilltop temple and then join Buddhist monks chanting in a dark, candle lit cove, far away from the “farang,” an endearing Laos and Thai term meaning foreigner.

Another I stumble on (i.e., crash) an outdoor hospital staff party and dance with twenty Laos on a basketball court, to a live band, to traditional music, the most lovely hand gestures, paired in couples, moving in a slow circle.

Another I meander the streets in pitch black, as power up here cannot always be counted on.

The World is (First Hand) Flat

From my hotel room, I Skype Berkeley, Singapore and Vienna; online banking; portal into my US-based PC; download music; and listen to live broadcasting of the BBC and NPR. One world. Amazing.

The Mind Meanders Down the Tibetan Plateau

8:30 a.m. Capital Express, T28, heading back to the capital 3,000 km down the 12,500 foot mountain, through Xi’an, along the Silk Road, then Eastward, to the industrial and populated coast, landing in Beijing, forty-eight hours from now. Tibet has been an adventure.

I’m glad to have the time to look out the window. It inspires free flowing poetics. The sun is rising over the sand-swept mountains, leaving behind China’s most isolated province. Lhasa is now a distant spoke connected to heart of the center, Beijing. Before long, vast, spacious valley’s emerge, miles wide, surrounded by snow-draped mountains.  

Small villages cling to the side of the mountains, red drenched Chinese flags float in the air. Small oases of life, a small farm shack, dot the landscape.   Rivers and icy tributaries cross the rails from high. The animal are married to the wind swept golden brush, the white and brown march, the soft permafrost. Sheep marked red huddle. Horses don yellow and orange, their mains flapping in the wind. The graceful, cornered antlers of yak pray upward. A man walks. He is nowhere and everywhere. A truck chugs up a distant road. A black-cloaked woman in a red fur hat tills. The Han man across from me yawns and checks his phone for text messages.

Others play cards, more interested in me than what’s out the window. Another insists I accept a cup of rice vodka. I do.  A river runs through. Does the mountain make the valley, or the valley the mountain. They are inseparable, defined in relationship to one another.

If I were a God, this is where I would live. Where emptiness is wide enough to hold the world, where time is measured in ions and the marriage of heaven and earth is quietly consummated. The Tibetans and Chinese share in life’s struggle, even as one dominates the other. Despotism is a feeble attempt to mimic the imperial grandeur of the cosmos for which we are pawns. 

“We are here just a while. It will pass in time. You might as well smile” Alison Kraus, on queue.

The train’s wheels are like prayer bells, clicking and clacking against the cold steel beneath. The rhythmic motion of the heart and breath, a reminder that opposites hold the world together. It’s no wonder that Tibetans and their form of Buddhism celebrate this truth.

Life and death are inseparable, just as are the white-tripped yak and the marshy grass, the pebbles in the streams. The highest train in the world. It’s a journey between a beginning and an end, pre-determined but only discoverable along the way. It is the journey of one day and one voyage; and it’s the journey of a lifetime. Somewhere along its line, our destiny with death awaits. This much is certain.

We just don’t know where that crossing will be.

8:30 p.m. glide into Xi’an, where I began my voyage to Tibet. Many Chinese travelers debark. In my t-shirt and slippers and tea cup – standard fair among the Chinese – I jump on to the platform with a few other Chinese men who yoke cigarettes. Stretch. Chinese beer is 60 cents. The cold is upon Northern China, much more than Lhasa.

I’m exhilarated and refreshed after 36 hours of transformative motions down the mountain and back to the intersection of the ancient Silk Road that carried goods from Shanghai, north and south, to president day India, Afghanistan, Eastern and Central Europe. The platform bell rings and new passages scurry onboard with their boxes and. A young man from my carriage ushers me from the window, with a great deal of urgency, to get back on the train.

We begin to inch forward, on toward an overnight arrival in Beijing at 7:30 a.m., Monday, when President Obama meets with President Hu Jintao. I’ll be heading back to the pleasant Sanlitun Hostel, a few miles from the American Embassy and where Obama and his entourage will be greeting officials. 

Tibet Trekking with the Boys

Three other guys, a Swede, Chilean and Dane, and I are paraded around the region for a few days. It’s a budget tour, but at least the guide, driver and accommodation owners are Tibetan.

I am stunned to learn that monks must renounce the Dali Lama and not wear their traditional garment. A lot of what we are seeing is being put on. Religion is practiced in private. Lamas must be approved by Beijing. Photos of the Dali Lama are banned and the next in line, a youngster, is under house arrest.

Every town we visit has a square with a Chinese monument. I suppose it’s to remind you who’s in charge. The valleys are glorious, torques blue lakes, high mountain passes, Mt Kangtdang glacier at nearly 15,000 feet.

When I look into the eyes of an Indian, a Nepalese, a Chinese and now a Tibetan, there is an unmistakable common humanity: work and family, greed and generosity, love and hate, hope and fear. This is true across the world. What makes the image in my mind crystallize is that, in the aggregate, these society’s live closer to the bone.

The eyes I pass, unspoken mutual affection and curiosity, tell a story of visceral struggle I cannot pretend to understand. Temples are filled with a million manifestations of deities, and intricate thankas, cloth paintings. Pious Tibetans circle temples, spinning prayer wheels, the earth turning on a heavenly axis.

Mao's Heavenly Night on The Great Wall

So enthralled am I that I resolve to rest my head on history. Nearly every half km is what was a watchtower, with space aplenty and windows hollow to the wind. A few more weeks and it would certainly be too cold. Having passed only a handful of people all day, no authorities and brilliant weather, if not now when? As the sun draws into night, I arrive at the Simatai Wall exit, just pass a 100m pedestrian suspension bridge.

We encounter a man at the exit, a small hotel owner who indicates that his place is just up the way, in the park. Some hot noodles and Shanshui, Tsingtao beer later, I borrow a blanket from the proprietor, while my companion more smartly takes a room. I hike past the Simatai exit, dark, steep, silent and exhilarating. The small headlamp illuminates my next step.

I greet Chinese photographers capturing the night sky, and ascent onward, past the exit I left a few hours ago, past tower after tower, and determine to reach the next mountain top I spotted on decent into the Simatai region. 10 pm. The top and end of this section. I locate a spot within a watch tower sheltered from the northerly wind. Candles from India illuminate my humble home this fortnight. I fall in and out of sleep, the Wall’s history at my back. Images and thoughts pass.

Far from the Vermont campsite where I began, I am still home. The strength to navigate between worlds, between walls, is a path less traveled. Boundaries sometimes must be respected but how seriously people take their positions, only to find themselves later in life on the other. Why not walk the distance between, and hedge your bet! No matter, courage is a prerequisite, at whichever watchtower you live, so long as you want to keep discovering new peeks. Experience is richer than worldly goods. The best things in life do not take VISA. This is the prevailing opinion of the backpackers I have along the way. That none – not one – has been a fellow American helps explain our alienated lives, comfortable in our own prison and threatened by bridges. 

I am in a land of authority and rules, yet I am defying them. Ironically, this is what China needs to take the next leap forward: creativity, risk taking, questions to the status quo. Herein lies one of the greatest questions. Can they make the transition when that’s not the paradigm here?

Asia. China. Empire. Great Wall. A soft howl, gentle breeze fills the void. I am riding a ball around an axis. If I don’t make it to tomorrow I will have lived today. Everyone’s journey is that of a hero. There are no short cuts. Courage is a verb. Clichés, the skeptic in me retorts. To the reader, perhaps. The question is, are you experienced?

Can you live the questions, and ride the uneasy answers? Reward comes the old-fashion way: hard work, fortitude and being brave in the face of adversity, whatever your circumstance. What we carry up the ladder of life we ride on the way down. Our most valuable assets compound with age, intangible annuities if we are so blessed: education, knowledge, discernment, wisdom. Honed by experience, they can provide us with the ability to reach toward a clarity of being, less susceptible to the capricious ways of this world. There’s a rub: no one can do it for you. No one can compensate for your fears. No one can move you an inch from where you stand.

At some point, like Ivan Illich on the edge of his mortality, we face our limitations and failures and misdeeds alone. Don’t wait; seize the world before it seizes you. The master game will be played with or without your participation, because no one can buy immortality. It’s not where you compare relative to others, ultimately, but how far you travel compared to where you start.

5:00 a.m. - Crescent Moon.

5:45 a.m. - Dawn

6:15 a.m. – Sunrise

I awaken high above the world, laughing that the Wall is beneath my back. It’s at least two hours before visitors might arrive.

The descent is slow, the eastern rising sun illuminating yesterday’s pass. Bach’s Cello Suites are commensurate with the magic of dawn. As I approach the exit, I encounter a pack of bustling tourists, smile and head down the stone steps to ground level. Shoe landing on the earth, one behind, between worlds, a moment in time, whispering good-bye to a symbol grand and audacious, bewildered and awe struck.

To give or not to give?

We pass Nepali children and farmers always. The kids are all too accustomed to Westerns, for the worse. Some, not all, ask you with the biggest, most innocent smile to take their photo.

If you do, and don’t give them the money that they than demand, they turn outright hostile. One girl got pouncing on my bag because the bill I gave her was worn. I took it back and began to walk away. She grabbed it back and that was that. Megan is a Stanford law student and has been working with an NGO in Kathmandu.

She’s of the opinion to not give money, because it just feeds the cycle. She tells me about the corruption in Nepal, how the World Bank would give loans but they don’t find their rightful place. Or how the hypodroelectric projects get built, but the energy is exported to neighboring countries and the Nepalese are left in the dark.

 “Down by the stream, I persuade two girls to try the gooseberries that grow there. The children are suspicious, tantalized, astonished; in their delight, they stare at each other, then begin to laugh.” – The Snow Leapard.

When I visited Southern India ten years ago, kids would be delighted to accept an American pen or pencil. On this trip I brought many. Sadly, kids in Northern India and Nepal aren’t interested, frown with disgust. This is a microcosmic example of globalization and the commercialization and homogenization of indigenous cultures, the unrealistic expectations seeded by TVs and movies and wealthy tourists flouting their money. The sacred becomes profane and for sale.

A boy in Kathmandu insisted that I buy him homogenized milk. His young sister is Vitamin D deficient. Later I learn that this is used to cut cocaine. Or, more likely, it’s resold for cash.

The Great Escape from Nubra Valley

A.M.

In India, things move slow. There is little to no central organization or command. Things happen when they happen. There’s no one to complain to and everyone points a finger at everyone else. The crossing could easily be closed another day. Tomorrow the flight departs for Katmandu. I am determined not to miss it.

If I was to make it across, and climb from 15,000 to 18,000 feet,  I needed to leave without delay. “See you in Katmandu” I say to Nathen, who is resigned to stay another night, passing time with more eggs and noodles. I pack up my 40 lbs of gear from the jeep and head out to the gaze of curious onlookers. The first 3k was steep but I began to find a rhythm, and feel energized. The Nubra Valley base camp begins to fade in the distance as I turn the corner into the high valley. It was quiet but for the tall snow-capped mountains, the emptiness and silence and space. With the oxygen thin, walk 10 minutes, rest two. Just me and a mountain, and all the gear I would need to make it the night, unpleasant but survivable. I count steps to stay focused. After three days, there is a quiet exhilaration in my pants just to be moving. What happens when you take control of your destiny.

“For two more hours I trudge and pant and climb and slip and climb and gasp, dull as any brute, while high above, the prayer flags fly on the western sun, which turns the cold rocks igneous and the hard sky to white light. Flag shadows dance upon the white walls of the drifts as I enter the shadow of the peak, in an ice tunnel, toiling and heaving, eyes fixed stupidly upon the snow. Then I am in the sun once more, on the last of the high passes, removing my woolen cap to let the wind clear my head: I sink to my knees, exhilarated, spent, on a narrow spine between two worlds.”  – The Snow Leapard.

It was then, that a small white car approached from the valley side. It was an off duty policeman being driven to a point where the road becomes impassable, from where he was going to hike to the pass and find a ride down. I flag it down. Mercy me. I squeeze in the compact car – not exactly fit for the ice and snow, typical India – and we rumble forward, stopping at the point where the road becomes impassable. I put the pack back on and head up the mountain road beside my new friend.

It’s gorgeous: crisp, clear and clean. The parking lot of onlookers is far behind. Before long, we were sharing stories about India and America. He offered tobacco and peppers to suck on. I pass on the herb but the chilly invigorates. He waited as I huffed during frequent breaks.

Reaching the top is the kind of moment you live for. The realization of your being in the world, a goal met, will power and destiny manifest. Setting out to do something despite fear – or because of it – working for something, building something, tangible or abstract, is one of life’s great joys.  It’s not rocket science or fancy living or material success, but it’s a moment worth basking in. There is a sole vendor serving tea and bread. The hot herbal brew goes down like silk. The simplest, greatest pleasure for 25 cents. 

Next stop is to find a ride back down the other side, to Leh. But first some unfinished business. I climb up a bit further, to the official apex at 18,500 feet, where prayer flags blow along with the sky gods.

It was here, at this time, in this place, on this day, that I could leave behind a wedding band and all the other failures of an unequivocally miserable year.  Up the snow covered path is a Tibet-flag covered Gompas, perched on the cusp of the pass, looking out at both valleys from one of the highest places on Earth. It was on top this place of prayer and hope, I reach on my toes and stretch my arm and place that silver ring among other artifacts that might be an axis point in heaven.

In that moment, with an exasperated prayer, I offer back to the Gods what wasn’t mine in the first place. There is freedom in the emptiness. The heart still, the mind calm, a cavernous space for something new, as open as the Himalayas are deep.

Having got here at last, I do not wish to leave…I am in pain about it, truly, so much so that I have to smile, or I might weep. There is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon” – The Snow Leapard.

The Buddhist notion of life’s fickle, temporal nature is no abstraction here. The things we buy are on lease, their pleasure fleeting. Our most intimate partners can become a name in an address book. Old friends pass, new ones emerge. long-lasting dependable friends can be counted on one hand. With age come disappointments in the outer world. To all these things I said goodbye, or rather thank you, for having had the honor to ‘possess’ something at all. One of the greatest ironies occur to me: nothing is something, and that something has more substance than all the weight in the world. But this is the way of Tao. It just is.

I scurry back to the tea house and before me are  two bubbly Indians from Delhi – software programs, textbook India – who offer me a ride back to Leh. The views are unreal. Leh draws closer.

Having crossed the pass and made it back to creature comfort Leh, a hot shower never felt so good. Dress pants and cleaned black boats, and a dinner with a bunch of Germans heading out on a trek the following the day. One of them is a teenager on his first trip outside Europe. His eyes twinkle with the curiosity of a five-year-old.  

We can wax talk all day, and most do. On this day, more than most, it was to be lived.

Seeking Americans Abroad

A business executive sent me this amusing World Citizen Guide, a primer to contrast the “ugly-American.”  If taken as a national metaphor, it’s instructive how America is viewed in the world. As I navigate my way through the Muslim parts of India, just showing up and being curious melts boundaries.

 

 Download World Citizen Guide 1

Traveler: Tourist vs. Pilgrim

In the high mountains of the Himalayans I meet older men who walk from temple village to temple village. They themselves say they are on a pilgrimage. “I complete my worldly duties,” said an erudite father-turned-yogi. “Now I seek.” The Aborigine call it a “walkabout,” where there isn’t a destination per say. You are said to keep walking until you are whole again. Muslims and Indians call it a pilgrimage, and they are everyone, sometimes in colorful packs along train platforms, heading to a sacred location that symbolizes spiritual wholeness. 

Pilgrimage usually calls for a journey to a holy site associated with gods, saints, or heroes, or to a natural setting imbued with spiritual power, or to a revered temple to seek counsel. To people the world over, pilgrimage is a spiritual exercise, an act of devotion to find a source of healing, a journey of risk and renewal, crossing boundaries literal and metaphoric, touching the land and feeling the earth beneath your feet. It’s process of regeneration and purification. The journey is almost always difficult, or it wouldn’t be.

Westerns have to create these metaphors for themselves. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going,” I’ve heard. Contradictions. You have to lose yourself in order to find it; solitude refines love; the road is the destination; yield to receive; be open to what comes your way.

Seize the world before it seizes you

Burlington, Vermont, Tibet Inn

Tonight is a full moon. The tent and camping gear and car are stored away. Now it’s just me and my pack. In a nod to India, my first destination, my head is shaved – the raw openness feels about right – and I am lodging at the Tibet Inn, not something I expected to find in the north woods of New England. The owned is a Tibetan exile who immigrated to America because America opened her gracious doors to the politically vulnerable. He has pictures of him with Senator Leahy of Vermont and the Dali Lama all over the lobby. I smile.

a useful definition of travel:

Vagabonding – n. (1) The act of leaving behind the orderly world to travel independently for an extended period of time. (2) A privately meaningful manner of travel that emphasizes creativity, adventure, awareness, simplicity, discovery, independence, realism, self-reliance, and the growth of the spirit. (3) A deliberate way of living that makes freedom to travel possible.

More than anything, it’s a perspective and attitude. About rediscovering the magic in everyday life, about bringing adventure to the mundane, about discovering foreign people and places, about learning to live a little like a child again, about being an explorer and life-long learner, breaking old habits, pondering life, and feeling the joy and excitement to live on this one world.

If you have traveled like this, you know the feeling. If you haven’t, this amusing video can give you a taste of the intoxicating, mind-expanding excitement and bond with humanity that once experienced will change your life forever and make you a citizen of the world (thank you Geoff):

The future horizon has narrowed to the next 72 hours –departure to Chicago for New Delhi.  When do I arrive, how will I get to a hotel, when does the flight leave the next morning for Rishikesh? I know not what lies before me. I am nervous, like how an astronaut might feel before lift off or an European explorer felt before departing port for brave new worlds. Months later, in the heart of sweltering Bangkok, a British expat implored me to Seize the world before it seizes you. So it shall be.  

Trust in What is Difficult

Burlington, Vermont, North Beach Campground

After months of preparation, closing a chapter and preparing another, life in America has been put in suspended animation. The forty-eight hour countdown begins tonight from the balmy August shores of a Lake Champlain campground and the tranquil North American, New England civility of Burlington, Vermont. “Glorious it is when wandering time is come,” says an Eskimo proverb.

The moon will be complete tomorrow, a marker of the twelve lunar cycles that will define this around the world voyage as a pilgrim, entrepreneur and lay journalist.  
I can feel the descent into the moment and the widening distance from the comfortable anxiety of living within the borders of a self-possessed benevolent empire, calendars and planners, getting ahead, working incessantly, obsessing over the trivial, aspiring toward consumption and the fulfillment of the unattainable.

The ancient Greeks taught that obstacles were the tests of the gods and the medieval Japanese believed that the perils of travel were fodder for poetry and song.

The bridge to what could just as well be another planet, India, is visible from my tent, to the airport, to a modern jetliner out of Chicago across Canada, Alaska, the northern glaciers, down through Russia and Kazakhstan into New Delhi, the other side of the world.

Time is beginning to be defined by the hear-and-now, by hours and days, by a deep situational awareness involving food and shelter and what’s next. Simple in theory, the objective is to live one day to the next with eyes wide open. Easier said than done. John Muir called busy Americans “time poor,” unable to bask in Yosemite’s greatness for more than a few hours.

Looking across the lake, the lazy clouds and distant New York Adirondacks Mountains illuminated by the waxing moon, a warm breeze gently waffling the trees above my tent, I can sense my perspective shifting from the linear to circular, from flat to round, from the role of American to global citizen. When I was in my twenties, in California, I lived in an RV, between a Bay Area driveway and weekend campsites and Pacific Coast shorelines, and came up with the motto: “Wherever you go, there you live.” It’s true now, except my home will be a backpack, my tent a train birth, a restaurant table, a bar counter, a jungle patch under a banyan tree. I am home in myself, an animal in motion, at once the center of all things, in a universe of infinite centers.

To ajar perspective, the best illustration is visceral and cosmic—of a pale blue rock orbiting an ember sun, in a large constellation, in the outer reaches of a solar system, among millions of other milky ways expanding outward, circles within cycles, an inflating balloon turning around an Omega axis mysterious and mystical. All these places are home when we are at home with ourself.

There is emptiness. I, like so many fellow Americans, have lost so much, at the hands of an economic meltdown defined by greed and arrogance, a system rigged to benefit the gilded, as has been the story of the ages. I let go of a new business before it had a chance to get off the ground; a spouse; a brother; friendships– all powerful reminders on the eve of departure of the inherent vicissitudes and uncertainties of life, and the hollow convictions and commitments I am tired of hearing in others.

Life is an impressionistic painting in motion, emotional, raw and unpredictable. Terrifying one moment, glorious the next, depending on what you see. As hard as we try to construct walls of security in our work and relationship and glorification of material possessions, as much as we judge others in self-righteous indignation, one way or another, during life or at its end, we realize that they are defensive facades of fear and paralysis, masks which obfuscate the fundamental rawness of our humanity and connection to all things. There is our nakedness and vulnerability, mortality and humility before the infinite, compassion and love for ourselves and the people and places we engage. That is all. Everything else is grist for the mill.

Rilke implored his young prodigy to trust in what is difficult, and this has been a helpful measure in turbulent waters. Between sitting with known fear and suffering, and a risky challenge of uncertain payoff, the later has always proved expansive—but never easy. To travel as would a pilgrim, where the voyage is the destination, where you seek experience over the false sentiment of possession, is an affront on the everyday illusion of immortality and the belief that the future holds our happiness.

The night is late. Time for sleep.

About One World Insight

 One World Insight is a multimedia meditation on the state of the world, by an American executive and entrepreneur, kicked off on a one year pilgrimage to emerging market nations. It’s an ongoing examination of business and culture through the prism of globalization at the dawn of the twenty first century. It’s a reflection on the implications of a flat, digitized world where someone’s problem is everyone’s problem, where outdated paradigms persist while new ones begin to emerge.

The challenges before the world arrest the mind – huge aspiring populations like China and India, carbon economies on overdrive, corporate hegemony, polluted fresh water and melting glaciers, rainforest and habitat loss, the hundreds of millions of losers in the race toward globalization, famine and decreasing biodiversity, nuclear and biological terrorism. Things move faster and with increasingly complexity.

Try as leaders get a hold of the situation, the future advances faster than the present.  Answers are allusive and politicized. One World Insight is one humble man’s attempt to ponder what it might take for business and government to move past the “time of peril,” the perilous gap astronomer Carl Sagan described as the evolutionary gap between humanity as a “selfish teenager” and humanity as a “responsible adult.”  The blog is also reflections on economics, business and innovation, as they are all related. It’s a canvas in which to integrate and discover one world.

The personal journey herein informs and inspires. While this dispatch is not a diary, the chronology around travel forms its backdrop and beginning. There are times where introspection is a useful if not only way to attempt to understand the mysteries of our world -- and give levity to stoic topics.

Make a comment or write me: lasw (~at~) kriyom.com.