The strange thing about this part of our journey is how feels like we live here. We have a house. Our house has a front and back yard. We have neighbors. We have our “town”. We go to the grocery store. We have a motorcycle, car and a local phone number.
In the span of just under three weeks, Emily knows her way around town, can explain the culture and has acquired more than 20 words of functional Indonesian.
For me, this was a place I lived – for a long time. In the very same compound – with the same housekeeper, type of motorcycle and car. I know the texture of Ubud and Bali. It feels completely comfortable and natural. I’m at home.
While I like to think I still learn something each day and keep an inquisitive outlook, I don’t question this environment. In a way, I consider myself part of it. Even though I no longer live in Bali – I feel as though I have a place of it. Bali and I belong to one another.
The interesting part about having guests is that they ask questions. They see things that perhaps I might not notice and force me to reconnect with, and sometimes reevaluate the place we pseudo-live.
In the past two days, as we’ve showed Emily’s mom, Susan and her Aunt Penny around Ubud and our “home”, they ask all the questions natural for visitors to ask. Questions about culture, practices, farming, artistry, tourism, food, society….things I know a lot about. Easy questions.
Only they made me think. When you share a place you know so well, you share a snapshot – the view you have, or have chosen to take. The Bali my guests – past and present – see and come to understand is to a large extent, my Bali.
They see my favorite spots. They go to dances, eat at cool restaurants, walk rice terraces, appreciate the morning sun over the fields next to the house….they get the Bali I have settled into after years of filtering, picking and choosing.
I like to think I’ve distilled it to the best of Bali.
Of course, I clearly haven’t – because my way of enjoying Bali is not the dominant way of doing it. The large resort hotels are on the beaches in the south. Many of the internationally acclaimed restaurants are in built-up tourist areas I try to avoid. I love to go to a coffee plantation frequented by a very small percentage of the people who ever set foot on Bali.
I believe that in life, there’s such an array of choices and possibilities. There are also the difficult, sometimes horrible curves life throws at you. It’s not all pretty and we can’t always determine what comes our way. So why not – to the largest degree possible – skim off the top? Why not pursue as much of the good stuff as we can? Why settle for what doesn’t work, or what doesn’t work well when the universe offers us just as many opportunities as it does challenges?
Bali is one of those things I’ve skimmed from the top of life. Even within it, I skim further and take the parts I love most. I have my version of Bali. My story within it – the pieces of Bali and me that have co-mingled and intertwined. That’s what I share with guests.
When I think back on the many guests who visited me when I really lived here, I realize they have all been told that story and walked through my Bali. They have been presented a particular shade and flavor of Bali out of the many that exist on this mystical island.
Perhaps some of them have chosen to share in my Bali – finding that it also works for them. After all, they’re friends for a reason. We have shared values and outlooks. It’s only natural they would like my Bali.
Others may have adopted my practice. I’m sure some skimmed off the top of my Bali and took some other things on the island that also worked for them. Everyone is entitled to create their own story.
Now, being where I am in life and feeling as I do about Bali, I find myself thinking more about where we should take our guests, and what I should and shouldn’t recommend. I’m making more effort to find what I think they will like rather than tell just the story I want to tell – realizing that whatever happens, they won’t miss my Bali.
Being a host in the same place at different times and circumstances provides a series of bookmarks to life. It induces reflection and makes clear exactly where the journey has led so far. Some things have come full circle while others have led light years away.
As we enjoy the company of our warm, caring and fun guests and prepare for more guests, I have begun to see the world, myself – and therefore, my Bali a little differently.
Today, I want people to see Bali and make it their own. I hope that they’ll love it as much as I do. I hope they’ll see in it what I see in Bali – or at least most of it.
Most importantly, I hope that Bali does what it has done so many times before – give us a special time and place that we all make our own, and which sews new threads between our hearts and minds.
Sent from my iPad
