Tuesday, July 26, 2011

A look into my book and a weekend in Chongqing

Hello to all of my summertime reading enthusiasts.  I am going to begin this blog with an excerpt from the book I have been writing regarding living abroad through my personal experiences.
Understanding “Truth”

Most people in particular are drawn to understanding greater meaning in life.  I have always been captivated with discovering truth.  Throughout my life my concept of truth has changed with time.  Truth is something that I feel great meaning in and has been on my mind as I have been writing, running, reading, and living in China.  When I was young I believed in a positivist model of truth.  There must be one great truth and that was going to set me free.  Being from a Christian background I found that truth to natural be in God and Jesus Christ.  As time went on I wavered in my philosophical and religious views and entered into a great gap of thought which opened up my mind to many alternatives.  As I grew to learn truth is veiled in religious, secular, peace, death, sadness, and most certainly in people.  Throughout the accumulation of one’s lifetime truth takes on many different forms at different times in a person’s life.  My truth is different than your truth will be. This change in philosophy has meant the death of positivism for me now as I realize that there is no one great “meaning”, “way”, or “peace” in life.  We all have those gifts in life which are special to us only.  Some people will never even know the extent of the magic of another person.  Even more will live without truly recognizing their own gifts.  I believe in experience.  Through different experiences a person will accumulate a much greater deal of truth than they previously had before that experience.
In rejecting the positivist model I still find my greatest meaning in God and Jesus Christ.  As I previously stated in the paragraph above I believe that all people create their own realities through experience, perspective, education, family, expectations.   Therefore, I choose to believe in God and Jesus Christ just as another person will choose to believe in whatever they find the greatest meaning in.  I find the greatest meaning in this religion because I believe in the legacy of forgiveness, compassion, and most importantly hope.  Regardless of everything else I feel that if a person focuses on these three things they too will find a connection at some level with Christianity.  I have discovered that my changing philosophies regarding truth and religion only became clear to me while thinking, reading, and writing in China.  Here is where the key of experiences comes to be so important in the world today.  Looking into an area such as religion which has a history of hostility between people is a good way to make the example of why experience is so important.
Can a person be truly reasonable?

               Our realities in life are greatly influenced by forces a person has no control over.  For example, family wealth, where you are from, what job your parents hold, social expectations, restrictions, family, education, culture, mores, religion, etc all play central roles in deciding how a person’s unique “truths” will be created in their own lives.  Learning and experiences are hard to come by for most people in the world today.  Living in the information technology age allows people incredible access to things which only a century ago would be limited to the highly educated and privileged.  The greatest achievement of the internet is the equal dissemination of access to ideas today.  Unfortunately not all information is reliable, trustworthy, or correct.  Bias and prejudice will and have always riddled the print of ideas from the beginning of written language.  Media sources throw ideas at people at a rate which makes the brain become apathetic to what it reads and hears today.  The brain is the highest level of consumer and needs to be able to make the best judgment when it comes time to be a reasoned person in the world today. 
The desire to be a “reasoned” person has even made me come to debate the validity of such a claim while in China.  Taking a topic such as philosophy for example bears some fruit on why being a truly “reasoned” person is impossible.  The reality is that most of the world’s great philosophies have never existed in written form.  That is because I believe that people who survive on less than a dollar a day, living without any of life’s great modern technologies, who would give everything to make sure that their family has food to eat, and make sure that they do not starve would have to be some of the best philosophers the world has ever read.  To read about a person suffering merely to survive is something that is profoundly human and would touch the hearts of people.  I often see a vast amount of people searching for food, sleeping on roadsides, and wearing tattered rags for clothes.  Their bodies are so emaciated that I am able to see every bone in their body through their meager covering rags. 
               The fact that we do not live in a reasoned world has frustrated, haunted, and even made me feel hopeless at times in my life.  I was so sure that we lived in a rational and reasoned world when I was a child.  After all I had never seen anything that would have made me believe to the contrary during my wonderful up-bringing free from fear.  I also felt that because human’s where supposed to think and reason knowledge that we most live in reasoned world.  My view also had a religious feel as well as so much in my life has and does today.  I believed that God made humans to be the greatest of all species, the care-takers of the Earth, the “thinkers” of the world, and creatures who were primarily good.  These feelings created a realization that the world in which I lived in must be inherently good in my mind.  I still had not fathomed the many difficulties that I would struggle with in life, the bad things I would see, and the world’s sadness I would know as I grew wiser. 
               My wisdom only has shown through my experiences in China.  The greatest gift I have had in life has been able to see the world from a whole new perspective.  I would do things which I realized people in China thought were completely wrong for reasons which I might have held being in their same situation.  Was I wrong?  Where they right?  Let’s take a sample situation to use for guiding principle.
Most days I go running in China.  During the summer time my running has changed a great deal to the changing environment.  With temperatures usually in the nineties with great humidity I still was resolved to run through the weather.  On most days I would run along the track of Rongchang’s campus which is near to my apartment.  My running would begin sometime around 11:00 a.m. and it would not take long for me to have visitors.  Passing by Chinese of all ages would watch in astonishment at the sight before them as a six-foot-four giant was running in summer’s afternoon heat!  This was a normal routine for me.  Around 11:30 a.m. elementary - high school aged students taking summer courses start flowing out to go for lunch.  Many of these students I taught that summer at one of my teaching jobs so the students were pretty familiar with me.  They always like to ask me, “nice to meet you”, “hello”, or “have a nice day” while I would be running by on the track.  I have become quite use to this type of attention and tend to merely wave at students instead of actually responding back.  In order to continue my running routine during the summer I made some calculated training changes.  First, I limited my runs to an hour at the most; which is about half as long as I was running at my peak of distance training in the spring.  Secondly, I keep myself hydrated to the point of almost being too hydrated.  I drink about twenty liters of water in two days and have a copious amount of Gatorades to replace electrolytes, sodium, and sugar during runs.  Third, I always bring my cell phone with in case of emergencies.  With these reasoned responses to the situation it does not seem like too great of a risk that I am taking. 
               My reasoning does not make the same mark on the logic of my Chinese friends’ though.  I know that they think that running in the middle of the day is wrong because it is simply too hot.  Both realities are correct and there is no right answer.  It becomes merely shaped by the realities of the people at the place, in the time, reading the experience through the lens of their own “truths”.  Reaching such a conclusion is only reached by having an experience such as living abroad.  No one can come to understand so thoroughly the similarities and differences of people until a person lives through it every day.  My emotion response to running makes it something that I find great value and hence meaning in.  I find running in the early afternoon to be a necessity to the fact that I am a habitual night owl who does not wake up some time until 10:30 a.m.  As I continued to get closer to the date of my marathon I was training my running changed in its value.  I find running to be a moment of peace from reality which allows me to put my thoughts in order away from a busy world filled with technology and constant media.
Seeing reason as a “value” or innate human characteristic?

               Some people value reason which is good in my opinion; nonetheless, they will still make irrational decisions quite often it seems.  Until I borrowed a little psychology I was unable to comprehend why reasoning seemed gone from the world.  Studies showing a direct correlation to human responses and reasoned thought hold a great deal of validity in their application.  Strong emotional response from the amygdala sent to the brain creates emotional sensation.  The pre-frontal lobe is responsible for abstract thinking and sends reasoned responses to the mind as it ceaselessly reads the changing environment.  In all situations these two factors have nearly the exact same timing in their inception to the mind; however, when the body receives certain impulses which create a “fight or flight” response the brain tends to disregard the reasoned thought reaction the pre frontal lobe may have sent.  Natural human fluids sent to create the sensation in the body make the person feel things which the mind cannot truly describe.  Tearing my Achilles heel is the one time in my life where I can say that I went through some pretty intense adrenaline which makes describing the situation almost impossible.  Often soldiers have similar trouble trying to describe how combat made them feel as they are rehabilitated back into society.
               With this knowledge I have been able to come up with a greater discovery about why I was wrong about the reasoning of humans today.  It drove me to realize that the human realities of each life, the creative nature of each person’s responses to each situation, and the complexity of the human existence together makes a reasoned world impossible.  I feel that this truth can be traced to many human realities around the world today and in the past.  As far as some things I can think of off the top of my head here are some of the more telling.  First, smart and rich people do not make the best leaders lack a workable vision for a changing society.  Second, people cannot agree on the simplest of things.  Third, many feel lost to the greater “meaning” of the world.  Fourth, some great souls are lost in an existential vacuum of thoughts about how we can or should make the world a better place.   Fifth, the great amount of people today who would rather stay connected to cell phones, computers, mp3’s, etc than take time to think about the world today.   Sixth, people who are afraid that they will wake up old and feeling that they did not accomplishing anything of value in life.  I can relate with many of the above realities because I too have struggled with them at different times in my life.
               The reality is that no one truth is correct; experience is the key to gaining greater perspectives, and that life does not have one “central” meaning which results in a reasoned society.  Even if I did believe that all people thought with reason I do not know if they would be able to come up with great “reasoned” societies because of the unique nature of the human beings lust for power, wealth, possessions, etc.  Even if we all had someone who was the most “reasoned”, “knowledgeable”, and “honest”, person in the world I would not throw my allegiance to them without first questioning their real intentions.  So many societies across the space of human written existence have become hooked onto leaders who professed to have all the reasoned “answers” for their people.  The results of the great reasoned despotic leaders of history are mixed, but many people found a greater appreciation for the horrors of death, famine, and war in their experiences than in achievement of a truly better world.
Why I believe that reasoned thought is important in the world today

               Reasoned thought is still an important value to me as a person, but I am also able to understand why people might not agree with me as well.  I would only ask that anyone who does disagree with a person has an original idea as to why.  I will always respect something thought out and reasoned to fit that person’s unique “truths” they have discovered in life.  I only ask that a person is very careful in assuming what they believe is correct.  Remember to question the sources, bias, and prejudices of the authors at all times.  Please do not think that I am trying to be arrogant in my plea.  I really wish that more people would spend the time, care, and just give a damn about the world today.  That is mostly why I sometimes feel hopeless, depressed, and without motivation to overcome the challenges of the world today.  I know that I am unique, but I am trying to find ways that I am able to grab the attention of people looking for meaning in their life.  If a person feels that they are without meaning in their life and want to do something admirable they need simply to think about the world today.  Think about the rich.  Feel for the poor.  Write Congress.  Join a local Church and go on a mission trip.  Learn about the uniqueness of the rainforest.  Become a member of a gym.  Drive to the beach and collect trash.  Spend time with friends and loved ones; a person never knows when their time is next.  Whatever that thing is that makes you feel alive with meaning in life make time to do it.  Take calculated chances and you will find greater meaning than you ever could have imagined.  Live life connected to the world and still dream.  Never give up dreaming and you will discover the greatest of all truths.  All people who live with meaning inherently altruistic in nature will find peace in death.  Many people who live their lives in search of ephemeral things, easy solutions, money, power, etc will discover the sad truth that all of these things are not going to make the trip with you to the next life or death.

This second piece of the blog entry entails a bit of my weekend fun in Chongqing with some of my good friends from China.
               My weekend in Chongqing was a well-timed break from my Rongchang routine.  I travelled with my good friend Maggie (Zhu shuai).  Maggie lived her first twenty-four years in Chongqing before she moved to work studying animals at one of Rongchang’s veterinarian research centers.  Together we meet up with my good friend Jack Yang.  Jack has been my guest at my apartment in Rongchang and our friendship goes back to my first trip to Chongqing in March.  As a big group we enjoyed a healthy pizza at Chongqing’s best (and only?) traditional Italian pizza restaurant.  I cannot really call it a restaurant because the pizza is made in an apartment which has been changed into a very quaint nook for foreigners and Chinese alike to enjoy real pizza.  I am emphasizing the essence of the pizza because China has quite a few interpretations of pizza which are sold at their own “pizza huts” across the country.  I feel much greater affinity to what I have learned to be traditional Italian pizza over my lifetime.  Thus, I wanted to show my friends out to the only traditional pizza restaurants I knew of in Chongqing.  Afterwards we all enjoyed an evening of dancing and singing at one of Chongqing trendiest bar / clubs.
               The next day Maggie and I enjoyed the movie Transformers III together.  All in all an interesting interpretation by Michael Bay, (I do not know if I would side with humans, an alien race, and condemn the rebirth of our planet only to save some human lives and freedom?), but that is something that I have come sadly accustomed to seeing in most “blockbusters” today.  I did enjoy the application of hope used by Bay and the characters to add a real human element to the movie.  I imagine that doing so is difficult when you are dealing with robots and as always the special effects were enjoyable.  Following the movie Maggie and I went shopping to pick up some food which we cannot buy in Rongchang, (butter, spaghetti, cereal, bagels, bread rolls, Hershey’s chocolate, etc).  Afterwards I meet up with Jack and worked together tutoring a twelve year old Chinese student practice their English.  I really enjoyed working with Jack’s unique knowledge of the challenges of sometimes being able to learn two quite different languages.  Afterwards Jack and I enjoyed watching T.V. with his mother.
               The next day I said goodbye to Jack and meet up again with Maggie for our return bus ride back to Rongchang!  All together I had a great weekend catching up with old friends.
               I am learning a lot of what it means to be a good teacher in China this summer as well by challenging myself by working with all ages of students.  In my experiences I have had to use some alternative methods to fit my audience’s unique abilities.  Reaching out to students of all ages and trying to teach them things of relevance really can be a challenge.  The challenges are exacerbated by the lack of modern technology at one of my teaching jobs.  By not having a monitor, computer, or even air conditioning I feel literally burning for teaching material at times.  I have found that classical-conditioning, rewards, psychology, personality, candy, pictures, writing words on the boards, etc seem to keep my students from drifting off into mental imagination lands.  I know for a fact that I drifted early and often to such lands as a child and want to do my best to make learning more than memorization for these young minds.
               I finished reading the wonderful biography on Dietrich Bonheoffer and was greatly moved by his incredible will.  He truly was someone who welcomed death rather than live complacently in Nazi Germany.  He had ample opportunity to do so as he was from a very distinguished family and could easily have just given in to protect his image.  He chose isolation and eventually his work for Abwher’s secret service resulted in his capture by the Gestapo and execution less than two weeks before Americans liberated the camp.  Abwher was ostensibly a Nazi secret service agency; however, the Canaris was able to keep secret his explicit involvement in one of the plots to overthrow Hitler only through his connection with the agency which Bonheoffer was to join in 1941.
I recently started reading H.G. Well’s, “The World Set Free” and have taken to it from the onset.  I look forward to upcoming weeks of relative quite before I head off to Beijing to join my parents on a two week vacation in China as a family!
Best wishes to friends and family
   

Monday, July 18, 2011

"Get busy livin, or get busy dyin" - Yes I just watched the Shawshank Redemption!

     I find it strange to remember that my last blog was talking about my vacation with Cory.  Two weeks later, and I have already jumped headfirst into a summer filed with vast alternatives to choose from.  Being free to make these choices really does indicate to a person what they value most in life.  At the very least it tells them what they enjoy doing with their free time!  My time this summer has indicated to me that I am a person who wishes to balance his time in many different pursuits.
I have started my long awaited personal jump into writing!  In earnest, I have complied a couple dozen pages on my experiences living abroad, some ideas, and life experiences.  Writing has always been a pursuit which I found to be rewarding intrinsically.  Unfortunately, I always found institutional education’s attempt at academic pursuit of writing within the frame work of one area’s focus to be entrapment of internal creativity.  What I find to be exceedingly enjoying is discovering similarities and differences between different academic criterion and subject matter.   Next, I try to draw the identifying ideas into a newly formed synthesis of ideas.  The result being what I always hope is something creative or new.  In reality, most of the ideas are trivial or deserve more study or research.  What I aim for is individual creativity something that is not found within the all framework.
There is just something unexplainable regarding the feeling that you get when you are able to put together an idea on paper.  In the mind, the ideas are like an infinite amount of possibility stored up as energy.  When the idea comes out in writing the energy is released into the realm of possibility.  At first, penning your ideas into coherent thought is a challenging prospect; however, pushing through those inner forces to complete your thoughts allows a sense of inner fulfillment.  The most remarkable thing is when you realize that you in fact matter as a person.  Not just you matter but that your thoughts matter to.  Even if your target reader is only a small audience that may not even be able to understand your real intent, purpose, or meaning of what you are describing.  The beauty of human life is existence.  Cogito ergo sum…  “I think therefore; I am,” does a nice job of elucidating the fulfillment of this life for me.  Humans are the only creatures who are able to put their life experiences into deeper meaning.  Writing is the natural fait accumpli for human expression.  Scholarship being the natural fulfillment of any reasoned philosophy in its many forms.  I only fear that people will lose their love of purposeful writing in the future.  The ability to write on blogs, face book, and twitter feds are both great gifts and curses.  It all depends on how you plan on using it.  Other than writing; I have also taken to several other pursuits this summer.
First off, my gaining popularity in Rongchang has granted me two different summer teaching jobs.  I have had the challenge and privilege to teach mostly middle and high school students.  I have enjoyed working with both groups as they have given me another outlet for my vast energies.  I have also found great enjoyment working with the younger children of elementary school age as well.  I enjoy making their world’s picture of foreigners brighter for in the 21st century.  I have had to do a lot of pedagogical changing to meet the challenges of teaching students who barely know any English.  Therefore, I usually start off by trying to explain everything in Chinese (my Chinese is still that of a beginner) which makes for an interesting forty minutes!  My classrooms also do not have projectors or computers so both of those easy avenues are gone.  I have take to a strategy of combining pictures, brochures, posters, and anything of English as visual teaching ques.  After being able to see the objects, pictures, etc I explain in Chinese and than in English what it is.  Again, my Chinese is poor so this is still a slow process!  Next, I write the word or phrase on the chalk board and we practice speaking as a class.  I think being a foreigner is my only saving grace in keeping their attention.   To this point, I can say that I have not yet had complete anarchy in the room which is a good sign.  Altogether, my students are warmly receptive to my teaching and my pedagogy is getting better with each class.  I also am bringing candy with next time to keep my students’ interests piqued!  I guess candy has the same effect on whether you are an Eastern or Western elementary student!
I have continued running with marked success.  Muscle adaptation has allowed me to switch energy systems in only two years time; which goes to show how incredibly adaptive the human body is under the stress of training.  While running on the treadmill I have reached all time best time and distance marks so far this summer.  It is hard for me to quantify what running means to me anymore.  I use to run because I had the goal of running a marathon.  I enjoyed the way my body was changing and felt that I was able to notch off another “life” goal of mine.  Now things have changed for me.  No longer do I run for my upcoming marathon next year.  I run because it sets my mind free.  For a couple hours each day I am completely free from cellphones, ipods, the internet, the world, etc.  I have come up with most of my thoughts while running during my time in China and I only recently started reaching my thought potential when my ipod broke several months ago.  This break from reality gave me the unique moment to rediscover meaning in life, my spirit, soul, essence of human existence, and my own inner life struggles.  Only throw this daily experience of running have I been able to look deeply into the good and the bad of who Erik Kottom really is.  Each run like each day is different too.  Sometimes I run with a tune in my mind.  Other days my thoughts are completely blank, irrelevant, or of fantasy.  In reality, each one is the necessary measure of one’s inner reality of that moment in time.  I cannot stress enough how I was only able to find peace in these ruminations through running.  It has been as therapeutic as writing for me during times of malaise.
I have enjoyed biking, basketball, reading, and living in Rongchang.  A fact of my existence in China has been living like a celebrity in the eyes of my Chinese community.  I have had more pictures taken, cell phone numbers, QQ numbers (equivalent of instant messenger), well wishers, etc than I can count, and already I am finding that I need to have some time for personal space.  I have resorted to making a good deal of my meals at home now to avoid always being singled out while eating.  Another thing that I have had to learn to say is “no” sometimes.  At first I indulged every single person I saw.  I sad “hello”, answered everyone in Chinese when I knew what they were saying, and basically was a very outgoing guest in the Rongchang community.  I still am today regardless of how I am trying to keep my personal space too.  I cannot change my outward friendly manner.  I have just learned to tell people “no” sometimes.  I think of it as understanding that we all have limits.  Sometimes I have to say “no” to myself and that whole process has taken time for me to get around to as well.  It is a balanced and necessary transition for me but something that I am feeling much better about moving forward.
I am currently still reading an intimate biographical look at the life of Dietrich Bonheoffer.  His continuous ability to see life’s many difficult decisions through the eyes of God was an incredible feat of discipline, calling, respect, and virtue.  Both Bonheoffer and Gandhi shared a love for creating environmentally sustainable living in their own times.  I find their individual measures very compelling and interesting regarding the 21st centuries continued environmental concerns.  I have come to the fact that I find any argument against sustainable development as quite short sighted for the future.  The role of humanitiy may be debated; however, I feel that weather or not we influenced a lot or a little of the many problems humanity can and should work to make the world a healthy place to live in environmentally.  Regardless of blame, guilt, or innocence I feel that humans should be compelled to help the environment from many perspectives.  First off, if you believe that the environment is of no concern to you than you need to ask yourself where you receive your life sustenance from.  Foods, plants, naturally synthesized chemicals, medicines, and humans all live naturally on the Earth.  If you destroy that biodiversity, forests, rivers, animals, etc than you are going to lose out on a considerable amount of naturally sustained sources of modern human existence which we use to live our every day normal lives.    
Next, ask yourself if you would be willing to pay for all of the natural pollination of plants, purification of water sheds, oxidation, translation of trees, and other services provided free from nature.  An estimate in 1997 was that these processes would cost 33 trillion dollars annually.  Any first estimated number is going to draw a lot of criticisms from researchers and skeptics; therefore, I believe that even if it is less than half reliable that is still an extremely high price to pay.  I am not a scientist; however, I am a person who loves experience.  Being able to go skiing on beautiful mountains, hiking in Yosemite National Park, descending down the Grand Canyon, or be it walking slowly in your own communities forest parks I enjoy being alone in nature.  There is a unique part of every religion which finds many of its leaders discovering truth alone in caves, mountains, deserts, etc.  Buddhism, Daoism / Taoism, Christianity, and Hinduism all feature unique love for the environment.  Far from being only a moral argument it is also a future job creator in a competitive global market today.  Looking at things from a holistic viewpoint allows you to see the benefits of smart planning.  Even in China they are making remarkably clean, fast, and cutting edge transportation infrastructure which makes America’s 1950’s interstate highway system feel archaic.  I know that if anyone in the world can lead these changes it is America where the technology, innovation, intelligence, and economic advantages all come together better than anywhere on the earth.  At least today. 
It is time that America changes its image from being the wasteful and consumptive giant of the world.  I was reading an article where CNN’s Fareed Zakaria compared America and China in contention to see whose resources, government, and infrastructure was in a better position for the 21st century.  Fareed draws some fundamentally correct analysis on the current situation, especially politically in America; regardless, America can still put forward a new synthesis of economic growth unsurpassed in the future if it embraces the changing world it lives in today.  And that goes for everyone in the world today.  The future has never been more up for the grabs while countries like Brazil and China continue to put forward consistent GDP numbers annually.  Who twenty years ago would have believed that in 2011 United States would be in the current economic crisis?  Not many people would have been able to foreshadow that the plentiful nineties would give birth to the unstable world of the 21st century which the U.S.A. would find itself in somewhat precarious economic, political, and military situations.  This incredible rate of change has never been seen in the world before.  The rise and fall of governments, ideas, economy, technology, innovation, etc is going to move at hyper speed for now on.  In order to remain in this battle for the long-run countries and leaders are going to have to learn not to be comfortable with their position at the moment.  If you feel that these are still not valid concerns question the opportunity cost of inaction.  What if you are wrong about letting the world go on a “status quo” for development, population, and consumption as usual?  I would hate to have to be there when “I told you so” would not even matter because there would be no future for the United States nor humanity to hope for on Earth.  
On a personal note I have been thinking a great deal about how I want to spend time in my life.  Here are some of the thoughts that I have been thinking of lately cataloguing my emotional responses to things.  Unlike most people I have always analyzed things at many levels; with my emotional responses to outward experiences depending greatly on the current moment’s thoughts.   
The perpetual movement of time continues to torrent forward like a sea against rock cliffs.  Time means different things to different people during different times in life.  To me, time is an enemy; constantly hounding, pestering, and aching for fulfillment of new experience.  I have worked to alleviate my pestering time in several ways; however, I have come to a point where I am beginning to question every single decision I do each day to see if it measures up to my “high” estimate of value.  Inasmuch, I am finding it sometimes exceedingly difficult to feel able to enjoy my own experiences that I have enjoyed in the past.  To this effect, I am still deciding on how I want to manage this new feeling of mine in ways that I find it strange to think that this sort of thinking is part of a revolving cycle I have encountered in the past of my life as well.  I remember feeling the same last summer as I was preparing for my last semester at college.  I wanted to make the most out of my time before I was going to make the “plunge” into a full-time career.  Invariably, I lost out on this great gift of time and found myself feeling quiet empty inside.  I believe that this goes back into the physiology of my brain’s chemistry; something that I believe I can only find better ways of managing as I grow older.  It is such a paradox to think that what truly makes me different; drive, passion, hope, perseverance, and resilience also is my undoing.  The antonym of these words clearly reflects a darker human quality: masochism.   Am I needlessly suffering for my own self-righteousness? 
It is a question that I have to ask myself from time to time and sometimes do not have an answer to.  Regardless, I know that I struggle with this question because I feel called to deliver the truth, bring meaning, and inner passion to whatever I am doing in life.  It is not merely making the best out of every situation, something I try to do nonetheless, but a greater feeling of self-fulfillment.  Self fulfillment only comes from the realization of knowing the best and worst about yourself, the balance of your mind, the meaning of your soul, and the acceptance of your body as a gift of human life.  Only through these types of personal knowledge will a person be able to find great meaning in their life.  The great thing about personal knowledge is that it is only learned through different experiences.  These experiences can vary in their realities (marriage, living abroad, suffering, true love, etc) but they all have a core way of expressing the inner beauty of one’s soul.  That is the kind of peace I am looking for in my experiences abroad and am happy to say I am finding day by day.  Like the great Tim Robbins stated in Shaw shank Redemption, “Get busy living, or get busy dying”!   

Monday, July 4, 2011

Shanghai, Seoul, and some MORE thoughts!

Our travels started out auspiciously enough with a nice two hour delay taxing the runway due to the inclement weather in Shanghai.  Fortunately to help pass the time I sat next to another English teacher from Missouri, Tyler Bates.  After a nice chat and flight (once we took off from the ground) we arrived at Pudong International Airport.  To start the trip off right I embarked on a rainy run along the Bund which was not more than ten minutes from our hostel.  Cory did an excellent job of finding a hostel very close to our sightseeing destinations in Shanghai.  After a pretty dismal day of weather; Cory and I set off to take some night pictures alongside the eerily foggy Bund and modern Pudong area which both run parallel to each other alongside the Huangpu River.  Take about contrasting styles.  On one side you are witnessing the 19th century colonial style of Europe in which China attempted to modernize during its short lived democracy of the early 20th century.  Only a half a mile away stands a contemporary space needle and another half dozen buildings which resemble a scene from the last Star Trek movie, unbelievable.     
Our next day started off well by meeting a group of Chinese students traveling to the Yu Gardens, the same destination Cory and I had hoped to visit on this day.  What a bit of great luck to meet such wonderful people.  I have found hostels to be an overall great experience besides sometimes having difficulty sleeping at night (I might be literally the lightest sleeper on Earth).  The gardens were breath taking and an overall great experience.  The close quartered Chinese designed encampment was so eerily removed from the outside world that I could scarcely hear the sounds of the city which were surrounding the garden’s perimeter on all sides.  The gardens are surrounded by a modern rendition of the old styled “Hutongs” of traditional China.  In hope of striking gold, Cory and spent some time looking for gifts to get for friends, family, and ourselves.  Cory and I did not really make a great effort on this occasion to find our gifts.  Rather, after a short stint of shopping for some unique Chinese ties we continued on our day’s adventure.  Our next stop on our journey took us to the famous Nanjing shopping street.  I seized this moment to purchase a pair of basketball shoes which I was in desperate need of.  Later in the night Cory and I would find ourselves tested to the ninth degree. 
That night Cory and I went looking to see if we could find some of Shanghai’s famous night action.  Unfortunately, we would find ourselves in a provocative situation which is predictable for our youthful ignorance.  Cory and I were a little lost trying to find the modern Xiantiandi area of Shanghai where we had staked out.  A man approached us speaking broken English and explained that a “night” club was actually pretty near from where we were.  As he took us nearer, I became convinced that this person had ulterior motives of some kind.  First, he asked us what we were looking for.  When we told him the French area and “bars” and “clubs”, he used these suggestions to only amount to the audible response of, “You want to drink beer, right?.  Now, we obviously would drink a little bit of beer; however, this neutral response caught my attention.  Next, he asked us where we were from.  Not our names…  Most Chinese do not offer their names right away; nonetheless the way he ran through questions made it feel that he was not very interested in getting to know us.  When we responded, “America”, he responded with, “good”.  He next asked us how old we were.  At this point, I moved forward by telling him un-endearingly that our names were Cory and I was Erik.  His response: “Lucky”.  Well, now even his synonymous name drew my guard up.  When Cory and I entered into the “bar”, we were taken upstairs and asked to sit down.  The room was quickly entered by four or five beautiful Chinese women. When Cory retorted that we were not looking for this kind of bar; Lucky responded with, “well, you said you wanted to drink beer, right?”  Refraining from making eye contact with anyone I told Cory that we needed to go, now.  After a second attempt by Cory to tell them that we were not interested I told Cory, now.  My first experience battling my youthful lack of experience and found me without a loss for words.  The experience was something that I know I will grow from and hopefully never make again.  Cory and I left both greatly disgusted by the kind of moral depravations going on there.
Our last day in Shanghai was spent seeing the very modern Pudong and Xiantiandi areas of Shanghai as well as the Yu Gardens once again.  After experiencing the world’s tallest hotel (Jin Mao Tower) we visited Xiantiandi in hopes of striking shopping gold.  Unfortunately, we stroke out.  The Xiantiandi area is such an incredible contrast to any other area of China I have ever been in.  It feels exactly like you are visiting a big American suburb with all of the most modern shops, cars, fashions, etc.  In a last ditch effort to find some ever evasive gifts Cory and I visited the Yu Garden’s hutoang area once again.  This time we were in luck because we found some great Shanghai gifts!  Some of our purchases included: authentic Chinese ties, a Bruce Lee T-shirt, and a gift for Cory’s girlfriend, Mi-Yong.  The last night in Shanghai Cory and I went to a very western bar in Xiantiandi.  An overall successful first stop on our summer travelling adventures!
The next morning I went on a goodbye run alongside the Bund River.  Running alongside the Bund everyday was one of my highlights of being in Shanghai.  I was so fortunate to be able to have this experience which I had not planned on.  Due to the lengthy driving process (an hour to get to the airport in Shanghai and an hour to enter Seoul from the airport in Korea) Cory and I missed a day here really.  Fortunately, we were able to be greeted by Cory’s amiable girlfriend, Mi-Yong.  Once we arrived at our final destination, and had meet our hospitable American missionary hosts (Rob and Esther, Mc-Cormick), Cory and I enjoyed what would be my first ever traditional Korean meal!  What a treat to be eating with two native Koreans who could both explain all of the intricacies of the dishes we were enjoying.
Our first real day in Korea started off well enough with a nature hike with Mr. Mc-Cormick.  We bonded instantly as he started discussing life, Korea, and other topics.  After reaching the top we witnessed a stunning view of the Korean capital.  I was very interested in being in a place where such high level security forces are perpetually stationed in and around the hiking paths.  The location of the military was in proximity with the 1974 North Korean plot to assassinate the President of South Korea through the mountain pass.  Nearly succeeding in there diabolical plot, all but one member was killed in the action.  The one remaining member is now a monk in South Korea. Truly, I have never seen such a great number of police and military personnel in a city at once in response to this failed plot.  There is an almost constant need for war time readiness which created a strange sense of anticipation for me.  The more seasoned Rob and Esther more or less talked ambivalently about the different “cycles” of tension between Pyongyang and Seoul. 
After the hiking, Cory and I were escorted around by Rob and Esther in an active military base.  This was my first experience being able to see how American families, soldiers, and support staff live abroad.  It was an interesting experience and something that I will remember.  After our tour, Cory and I walked through and around the Gyeongbogung palace and Presidential “Blue house”.  I greatly enjoyed being able to examine with Cory the minor differences between Chinese and Korean artwork, tradition, and culture.  I guess it really helps to have a Korean expert and prior traveler around when you are visiting Korea!  That night we ate some delicious dumplings with traditional Kim chi which Esther made for us.  What a treat!  By this time, Rob and Esther’s adopted son Douglas was really enjoying having guests with him.  I was very impressed with his spoken English and Korean while visiting.  It is such an important and unique gift to be able to learn languages at an early age.
Our third day in Korea marked an awesome sightseeing day.  Cory and his girlfriend, Mi- Yong, graciously showed me around some of Seoul’s great sights.  We visited an awesome traditional and modern Korean art museum, Korean War Memorial, and aquarium.  I was struck by the incredible amount of details regarding the Korean War that I had very sketchy understanding of prior to visiting it.  I have therefore been spending some time researching on the computer the details of the conflict.  I now feel much greater understanding for the great sacrifice of American lives in this brutal conflict.  I am also quite saddened for the fact that such a conflict is rarely remembered by average Americans today.  Afterwards, we enjoyed a nice traditional beef dinner.  The meal along with the time spent with these three friends was very memorable for me during this trip.  I am ever thankful for Mi-Yong’s knowledge of traditional Korean artwork.  I really gained a unique perspective from her on traditional and modern artwork and gained a lot by it.
Our next day in Korea was spent basically helping me to supply “up” for my next year in China.  I needed to get some things and Cory was an amazingly patient shopper with me.  Naturally, Cory will be able to get all of the things which he will need this summer back in America.  Thus, it was a great sacrifice of his to allow me to do some shopping while in Korea.  This evening I went on a night run which allowed me to see the beautiful buildings and sights illuminated in neon!  It was an awesome running experience for me to see and compare with that of Shanghai’s incredible lighting.  That evening I went to bed early in anticipation of our 5:30 am ride down to Rob and Esther’s small farm an hour and a half outside of Seoul.
The next morning, Cory and I were chipper and ready for some farm repairing!  Luckily the drive was without traffic.  We spent the next five or six hours helping Rob and Esther with their farm’s repairs.  I greatly enjoyed being able to see this different perspective of Korea.  The small town drew some similar comparisons to Rongchang, China.  However, in Korea there were a greater number of cars, less motorcycles, and a lot less noise.  Rural Chinese drivers find it completely applicable to “honk” there horn quite liberally while driving.  This trivial difference is kind of an interesting expression of machismo, helpfulness, and habit for local drivers by now.  However, driving was very much more westernized with driving styles in Shanghai.  I am interested to see when these changes will come to Chongqing and than Rongchang.  It will be a very interesting transition in deed; if it happens at all.  After our ride back to Seoul Cory and I went out for a few drinks with each other at bar called, “Miller Time”.  This marketing and merchandising is just one more another example of globalization in the world today.
The next day was sadly our last in Korea.  We had hoped to be able to visit the DMZ; however, due to not being signed up in time we missed out on this experience.  Instead, Cory did another awesome job of showing me around the cities UNCESCO World Heritage sites.  Our walk and his “guided” tour around the Choengdekung palace were both exceptionally interesting to me. The spaciously designed palace allowed for great movement of court officials, visitors, royalty, etc to walk around.  This is much different than Chinese palaces which are very closely designed negating free spaces for walking.  Following Choengdekung, I meet Cory’s fellow Cretin Derham Hall ulumni, Emily.  Suddenly, our conversation together was turned to interest as a gathering sound of people become more audible from the outside.  Unbenownced to me a student’s rally was being held outside of our smoothie shop.  It was my first experience with a live protest and with the powers of democracy in a foreign country.  It gave me a unique perspective and something that I will not forget in the future.  Following this wonderful visit Cory and walked around the sites a little more before I stopped to eat at a California Pizza Kitchen…  See, the world is really flat!  Afterwards, Cory, Mi-Yong and I enjoyed a nice evening of hitting the night life in Seoul.  It was a drastically (thankfully) different experience than in Shanghai and something that I will scarcely forget in the future! 
Our last day was spent in transit due to the fact that we both had international flights and pending connections before arriving at our final destinations.  Saying goodbye to Cory was very interesting for me.  I have never spent so much time with one person before in my life.  Naturally, the growing process together has been quite interesting for us both.  Over time we have really started to understand some of our similarities and differences.  After saying our goodbyes I spent a nice day in the airport before arriving back to Chongqing at midnight.  Travelling on my own, it was all together a very successful, fun, and worthwhile vacation to Shanghai and Seoul.  I looked forward to spending my time this summer back in Rongchang and am excited to be able to continue practicing my Chinese.  Another goal of mine is to start writing a narrative highlighting my time, journals, ideas, etc about living abroad.  I am starting to write this in earnest and have not set a timetable for its completion.  My first few days in Rongchang have been great and I look forward to many more before I head off to Beijing in the middle of August to join my parents on a two week vacation in China together.  Lastly, I have included some more of my thoughts these last two weeks regarding the changes that have taken place in my life for those interested readers!                    
 The last two weeks have been as always it seems with me an incredible period of personal growth, realization, and increased faith.  I am closing in on a greater understanding which I seem to have stumbled upon.  This is a very strange development for a man who has always been keen on driving his own car at the expense of everything in life, advice of others, and inner voice.  Knowing that you are a driven, unique, passionate, and intelligent person is one thing; acting upon these gifts can be a much scarier prospect.  Social, economic, friends, and family expectations weigh down on people around the world.  The past few weeks I have read quite a few inspiration Christian works which have changed my life in many ways.  From discovering my own personal struggles, depression, birth gifts, and meanings in life I slowly have been set free from the chains that bound me.  These chains can be credited to my own ephemeral desires, machinations, weakness, passions, etc.  However, these chains have another more external stimulus as well.  Due to human interactions, societies, and the existential vacuum swallowing up many driven Americans searching for meaning in life, I feel that I lost my faith in Lord as I grew older.  The meaningless part of my life coincided with my depression, college football failures, physical injuries, and my search for meaning, truth, and personal voice without God.
  All of these tragedies coming together at once almost destroyed Erik Kottom.  I was literally at the precipice of my fall.  I looked over the mountain’s ledge at the nothingness that would befall me at my downfall.  How could I go on trying to overcome life’s continuous sorrows when I knew that everything actually had no meaning at all?  The college academic environment which I had always been driven to succeed at was turning out to be a nihilistic disaster for my first two years.  I guess the only thing I can think positively about those two years was that they showed me how low things could really get in life.  I am not blaming the curriculum, division 1A football, or my situation.  Some people strive in these times in life facing the same challenges.  These challenges just lost meaning for me.  Once things lose their meaning in life it is as good as over.  Viktor Frankl wrote about how each one of his fellow concentration camp prisoners all could see that once a person gave up hope (lost meaning in suffering) they were as good as dead. 
My saving grace would come in the form of my next two years at Saint John’s which ironically through tragedy started a religious revival which has lead me to life I am truly happy with right now.  A path that will allow me to speak with passion, feed my desires for vocational voice, meet my birth gifts, change the world, and have a lot of meaning in.  A change in the meaning of these words was also needed for me to grow as an individual.  No longer do I think of “changing” the world as getting my face in the history books.  That was something that for as long as I can remember I wished more than anything.  To be remembered.  I am slowly growing up and realizing that these sort of selfish things are so pointless in this life.  Living each day towards reaching an honorable goal is a much more self-fulfilling, worthwhile, and inspiring way to live life. 
This path towards enlightenment has been such a strange, humanizing, wonderful, and very meaningful experience for me.  In discovering this path I have found myself bouncing around some of the world’s most popular ideals, thoughts, fears, and found triumph in myself for the first time in my life.  Not the shallow triumph of victory in the sports arena, in the classroom, in debate, or with friends and family.  A greater sense of self which comes only from greater life experiences.
Life is too short to need to be perfect.  Instead, trying to be happy with who you are will give you the most satisfaction in life.  This realization takes a little time for some, and for others like me might take an entire lifetime.  Fortunately, I have a personal ally in this fight whose forgiveness will never leave me as long as I remember to honor The eternal laws.  Timing is everything in life and these revelations are sure to play a large part in my decision making down the road.  For now I am still trying to sort out my past, discover who I am, find my birth gifts, and create a career path which has meaning for me.  All of these things I know will bring me fulfillment in life which is something that I thank God for everyday for not leaping from that mountain precipice.