Reflections

I have been pondering life lately...
in the few moments of thinking time that I can fit in these days.

I know it has been awhile since I updated this blog. Some of that comes from a severe lack of time. But another part of that has been a intentional choice to refrain.

It seems sometimes that technology and electronic communication overtake us and suck us into a false reality. It takes away from the genuineness of our actual relationships. We spend more time connecting with people in virtual reality than in real life, face-to-face interactions. I am not sure what to do with this but it has spurred me to want to live in the present, in community with the people around me, instead of searching for meaning and recognition from an artificial world or electronic friends.

In the meantime life continues rolling by, filled with simple moments of kampung life and daily living.

Like the other day when I was on my way to school and a little boy was standing on the side of the road. He could not have been older than 4. When he saw me passing by he stopped, kind of got down in a squatted position with his butt sticking out. He stuck his finger out at me, pointing and staring me down until I was out of sight.

Another morning down the road a little further an older man was standing in the middle of our dirt road in nothing but his boxers. He looked a little lost. Perhaps he had just woken up and stumbled outside. Standing there in a daze, he seemed to be trying to remember what it was he came outside for.

Yesterday on my way out in the afternoon, I looked over down the small path that is across from my house. Outside one of the houses was a girl in maybe 4th grade wrapped in a towel. She looked like she had just finished with her afternoon mandi (bucket bath). I have no idea why she was standing outside but she was.

Today I came home from school to find they had harvested what I affectionately call "our rice field." There is a small field that sits right in front of our house. I claim ownership over it even though I take no part in the labor involved in making the rice grow. Over the past few months we have watched it go from small little sprouts to tall stalks of bright green. But now it has all been chopped down and the field lays barren and brown.

Just some random reflections of life here in the kampung.