Go Legs Go! Is it Suffering, Happiness, or both?

As some of you know, I am starting a bike trip today from the Far West of Nepal (Attaria) to the capital of Nepal (Kathmandu).  The trip is 650 km and will take 8 days.  My friend Garrett who lives in the Far West was planning to do the trip, and I decided to tag along!  It is 650 km and will be the longest bicycling trip I’ve done in my life and I am crossing my fingers that my body and bike will not fail me.  I will be riding a $200 mountain bike that I bought with the help of Peace Corps about 2 years ago.  Since buying it, I have had to fix it three times for the same problem.  Because the roads where I live are so rocky, the derailleur gets a beating and has been knocked and bent more than I ever expected.  The fix costs anywhere from 650 NPR ($6.50) for a new hanger, or 1700 ($17)  for a new deraileur.  While that may have seemed like a bargain to me in the states, it’s equivalent to a few days wages for me here.  Also, the original pieces are only found in Kathmandu, so it has been a struggle trying to access them.  Because of the difficulty of fixing it, I have been very possessive of the bike and tell anyone and everyone who tries to grab it and ride it that today is not their lucky day, and will they please give me my bike back.  As I am getting ready for this trip, and preparing for the suffering that will come along with it, I remember all the situations in which I have been given the honor of participating in the suffering of the people of Nepal.  While I will never fully understand what life is like for those who live here, having the opportunity to experience their struggle has left me with with a sense of perspective, gratitude, and compassion.  “By definition, compassion involves

opening oneself to another’s suffering.  Sharing another’s suffering.” (Cutler, 117).  The people of Nepal have embraced me, accepted me, taught me, and welcomed me.  I have shared my personal struggles with them, just as they have with me and we have both cultivated compassion for each other in the process.

Now, in order to explain why either of us would want to take on each other’s sufferings, I turn to the wise words of the Dalai Lama found in the book “The Art of Happiness” who says “I feel that there is a significant difference between your own suffering and the suffering you might experience in a compassionate state in which you take upon yourself and share other people’s suffering.  When you think about your own suffering , there is a feeling of being totally overwhelmed.  There is a sense of being burdened, of being pressed under something-a feeling of helplessness.  There’s a dullness, almost as if your faculties have become numb. Now, in generating compassion, when you are taking on another’s suffering you may also initially experience a certain degree of discomfort, a sense of uncomfortableness or unbearableness.  But in the case of compassion, the feeling is much

different, underlying the uncomfortable feeling is a very high level of alertness and determination because you are voluntarily and deliberately accepting another’s suffering for a higher purpose.  There is a feeling of connectedness and commitment, a willingness to reach out to others, a feeling of freshness rather than dullness.”(Lama, 118)  The Dalai Lama then goes on to explain how this rush is similar to what an athlete might experience when exercising.  Although the pain and exhaustion is great, the athlete feels a great sense of accomplishment and joy from the experience.  Such a joy would not come about if perhaps the athlete were told to labor over doing something that was outside his or her workout routine.

While I am forced to accept many aspects of life here such as having to walk 100 feet to the toilet through urine and dung soaked mud, I am also given great autonomy with what I choose to take on, suffer through, and learn from, and what I choose to avoid.  For example, I try to do at least one productive thing with my day, but I don’t help out as much with the cooking as I suppose I could.  I have learned that great joy comes to me in the moments when I am interacting with the Nepali people, teaching them something I have learned, and sharing

time together that isn’t forced or contrived.  When I am helping someone, or they are helping me it is for no other reason than the fact that we both get joy out of the experience.  This is a feeling I often didn’t get from working jobs in the USA.

I am grateful for the opportunity to spend my time as I please, and I am reminded of that privilege day to day.  In training for the bike trip, I have been running often in the mornings.  Often on my runs, I pass by women and girls going to cut fodder for their animals.  They are up in the morning and labor not because they are concerned about their physical fitness, but because they need to.  If they don’t cut the grass, they can’t feed their cow; if they can’t feed their cow, they don’t have milk, dung, or urine (all of which are utilized here).  In passing them, I press my hands together in “Namaste”, smile, and jog on, leaving them slightly puzzled as to why I would be running if
I’m not being chased.  It’s the same feeling I get when I work with people sometimes.  They try to push me away and let them do the work because why would anyone choose to come here and do physical labor?  I smile and tell them with equal assuredness that I get joy from the experience and wouldn’t want it any other way.

This ability to pursue my passion, and spend my days, hours and minutes as I please is a gift that I hope to give to others.  I believe that the meaning of life is to pursue happiness and  everyone should be able to look for, find, nurture and keep that which makes them happy.  As many of you know, I am raising money for my friend Keshav to purchase a cricket bat which will allow him to try out for the National Cricket Team.  Keshav currently plays for two Cricket leagues and is also going to school to get a Masters in Sociology (going to Kathmandu to get a Masters in Sports Technology was not in the budget).  Over the past two years, I have seen how much Cricket means to Keshav and how natually talented he is with it.  If he were in the US and playing baseball he would probably be playing for the big leagues and be sponsored.  Now, asking for money for a Cricket bat might not seem like a worthy cause to you, but it would make a world of difference to the life of one person.  Dare I say, it could change his life.  

There is a story about two friends walking along the beach after the tide had gone out.  As the friends are walking, one of them keeps stopping to pick up starfish that are stranded along the shore out of water.  He picks them up and throws them back into the water.  His friend asks him 

“Why are you doing that?  There’s so many starfish along this shore, you can’t possibly make a difference.”

The first man picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean.  “Made a difference to that one.”

Please donate to the fund.  Whether you choose to suffer to gain compassion, or follow your passion, we are all one in the search for happiness and we wouldn’t be anything without each other!

https://www.gofundme.com/keshavcricketfund