Weasels Ate My Underpants

I spaced out and left my favorite black bikinis on the clothesline overnight (I can’t stand those g-string things, but that’s a story for another day). When I went out to the garden to retrieve them in the morning, they were lying in the wet grass… I picked them up, then made a sound something like “gak!”… and dropped them again. My favorite undies were peppered with tiny teeth holes, and covered with a weird snotty animal substance.

Now, this wasn’t as scary as negotiating with machete-wielding 14-year-olds in New Guinea, or being dragged by an 80 pound rickshaw driver through a Maoist demonstration on the border between India and Nepal… it wasn’t as exciting either, but these and the weasel experience did have something in common.

They all remind me of an important lesson of travel – that it’s good to be taken out of your comfort zone and given the freedom to be a dork. It takes so much effort to be cool… it’s a privilege to be out in the great unknown where you’re often unintentionally dorky… you can’t speak the language properly (I once requested a wakeup call in Spain by asking “Please attack me in the morning” – dork!). The first time we went to the grocery in France, we didn’t know we had to weigh our produce ourselves and bring our own shopping bags until we got to the checkout – dorks! Dick’s bag didn’t show up in New Guinea, so he had to tour around in borrowed grey sweatpants several sizes too small for him – dork!

On this subject, I found this in my meditation book today:
“When we first contemplate the adventures of the world’s great explorers, we are struck with a feeling of the mystery and drama of discovery. We might picture them venturing into uncharted waters or exploring strange, new lands, but we tend not to think about the countless daily hardships and inconveniences – the mosquitoes, the rain, the boredom, the bad food. Yet that is all part of the journey as well. In the same way, the countless irritations and difficulties that present themselves in the course of practice are part of the extraordinary exploration of the nature of our own lives. It is easy to get so caught up in the details of our experience that we may lose touch with the vast scope of the context in which we are working.”

Yup – in other words,it’s all part of the adventure. And it’s OK to be a little bored, too, or sick, because that’s real life… sometimes weasels eat your underpants.