A Pigs Life

BumberShootStudio Paintings
Copyright 2019
Gift Card Sets coming soon

The music playing in the taxi is totally foreign, can't understand a word of it...yet it sounds completely normal to me.
I also can't read anything, nothing here is in English...but the truth is, I don't notice it anymore.
I go about daily life surrounded by people, hundreds of people, and there is not a single conversation around me that I can apprehend. I hear everything and understand nothing...yet I somehow know what's going on as if it's always been this way. It's the weirdest thing, but none of it phases me anymore.

If you were to rewind the tape of my life back to the first time I lived here in China, twenty six years ago...all this was incomprehensible. My very existence here seemed erroneous, like a letter in the wrong place of the alphabet. It felt like someone else was living in my body and I was watching everything play out from a very somber, remote distance.

In my last post I mentioned how I take comfort in things that I know, truth is, we all take comfort in things that are familiar - that which is easy to recognize; because of being felt, seen, met, heard and yes, even smelt 'before'.

I've thought about the irony of it all, something can not become familiar without that 'before' part (that incomprehensible place). The uncomfortable stage that comes prior to it being familiar.

Really, this is our whole life, from the time we are born until the time we no longer are willing to leave our comfort zone. But it is in these uncomfortable, and I would dare say, painful stages of life that we expand our self-definition.

Here in China, living in your comfort zone is what they call 'living the life of a pig'.

I hope 2019 (till now), which is the 'Year Of The Pig', was not a literal mantra for most of us. But if it was...
The New Lunar Year is once again here and it's time to say good buy to 'a pigs life'. Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) symbolizes a fresh beginning.

So take that class you were interested in, but didn't think you had the time. Learn that new instrument you've always wanted too, but have been afraid because of your age. Write the book that you've been talking about, but can't find the motivation to commit. Delve into a new language that fascinates you and release that cat who has your tongue.

Take the risk...and experience life.