Purpose?

Exactly seven months ago, I "left my life" in San Francisco and decided to surrender to the universe to see what would unfurl. My only plan was to attend Pyramid Yoga Center's three month program in Koh Phangan, Thailand. Thereafter, the unfurling resulted in a position to teach yoga for one month on a gorgeous paradisal beach and to study ashtanga yoga with a great teacher. When I fell on my back cleaning my jungle bungalow terrace during a monsoon-force rain one morning, I could no longer do any physcal activity. The resulting infection to my entire arm was further incapacitating. Instead of active yoga, I became more self-reflective in paradise - yet another form of yoga. Then, I went to Kathmandu and had a wild time with expat friends that I'd met along the way. A suitor followed me from Thailand and that didn't work. Two English actors danced with me on the dance floor and the next morning I was off on a motorcycle journey across Nepal to India with them. Because Nepal had no petrol, it took longer than expected and we were stuck in Pokhara. In Pokhara, I sang with a band and had my camera and I-pod with 15 days worth of carefully selected songs burgled from my hotel room while I suffered my first delirious bout of diarreaha and vomitting from whatever. I became accustomed to leaches just as the petrol returned and we rode free and not-so-easy across beautiful, beautiful Nepal. Then...India. I cried when I was alone at the border b/c I was terrified to be alone in India. Alex (one of the English actors) told me: "India will take care of you and then you'll take care of India." Indeed, he has been correct. I have studied yoga in Rishikesh and met a wonderful friend. We experienced "real India" in Agra and travelled far, far north to Leh for moonscape musings and Tibetan rituals. I had an adventurous romance, further motorbike explorations with my lover and myself, practiced English and taught a bit of yoga to Tibetan refugee children, attended three pujas and visited over 10 monasteries, then trekked through the highest peaks and remotest regions of Zanskar for 10 days and nearly 200 kms. What has unfurled has been rich and full and vivid and I remain grateful as ever for this life.

Yet, in retrospect, I'm a bit lonely. The recent trek has highlighted that there is a price for this freedom. With each step I took to ascend an even greater peak of the Himalayas, I would see families and farms and communities. I'd hear laughter and crying and the sound of a single person pounding a granite boulder with an axe to split it in half. For me, I have no land to till. I can just leave without worrying that the crops won't return. I am fortunate that I don't have to do back breaking labor EVERY SINGLE DAY in the field of stone and sand like those in Ladakh and Zanskar...but where do I belong? I love San Francisco, but it goes on without me -- beautiful, funky, wild and sophisticated, international, savvy, unexpectedly incredible San Francisco...it goes on without my steps trodding to the law firm along its undulating hills every morning. It goes on. I have chosen no marriage. I have chosen no family. I have chosen no work. Yet, I see families and women cooking and working and cleaning and carrying snot-nosed babies and I feel that I am just floating along. Society and community...they go on without me. Where is my place? I've considered marriage, but chosen independence and lovers, then independence again. Yet, I'm lonely. I feel that I'm like a broad swathed river seaping into crevices here and there, but never too deeply. I have travelled far and wide and made many beautiful connections and experienced many incredible adventures, but for what? This blog. I travel, but what do I really know? There is so much that goes on without me right under my nose and I'm clueless. What are these rituals I see during pujas? How long were there asian slaves working in a sweat shop under my apartment in San Francisco when I lived in Nob Hill? How many dogs had been kidnapped and sold by the Mexican gangs whom I walked alongside every day in the Mission District of San Francisco? Now, in Leh, how do they till this land that looks so barren and unforgiving and produce such a bounty of food and flowers? How does a woman work land, cook food, care for babies and love her husband all in one day every day? I don't know how to do this. I am a woman. I am 35, educated, worldly, attractive, adventurous, open-minded and curious (so curious!), yet all that I have done has been, it seems, like water spilling over a surface. Temporarily there and refreshing and delicious, then gone. As I sit here today, I wonder what to do with the remaining five months and I honestly feel a bit lost and uninspired. On one hand, I realize the bliss of being free, completely free. But on the other hand, I would like to have a purpose - connection - understanding - continuity. This is rarely had on the road. I've had glimpses. I realized this years ago when I was 20 and lived in Scotland for a year. I had two lives on either side of the Atlantic and they never met. It was a hard lesson. Now, I've repeated and broadened that reality across the Pacific. At least it's global now. Well rounded. Ha ha.

The trek made me think about my chosen isolation in this life. In many ways it was a metaphor for me. New heights, new challenges, new experiences, new friends, new stories, new adventures -- all as I trod upon a well worn path through ancient mountains and kingdoms peppered with communities and families and traditions. I noticed these things, but didn't stop to savor them, I just kept walking and enjoyed the beauty surrounding me at the moment. That was it. This is it. It is said in yogic tradition that if you can quiet the mind and tune into the self, none of these desires for wealth, beauty, enjoyment, adventure, etc. are of any import. I find it funny that nothing is said of the desire to connect with another or community or a place. Instead, the life's purpose becomes clear with a steady, quiet mind. So, does this mean that if I find my life's purpose, the rest will fall into place i.e. community and family and I'll no longer have such wanderlust? I truly don't know. All I know is that I'm tired. I'm inspired. I'm grateful. And I'm alone. If all of this is meaningless and a construct of my imagination, then there is no point in questioning any of this. I should just go with the flow. Perhaps Christian was right when he said that he feels women feel and think so much that it creates unnecessary pain for them. Today, I feel that that is true. It's been seven months. It's also the second time I am actually alone. The first day was in India when I arrived. This second day is now - the day after I return from a trek through the wilds of the remotest region in India. What a trip.

Just as I write this and am feeling alone and out of community and feeling that I've chosen isolation and I'll always be in it, the internet connection came back up and through incredible Facebook, friends from as early as eight years old have reconnected with me. One of my friends from yoga school told me "this is what the universe has in store for you in this present moment," "love, love, love beautiful Kyra," "You are incredible!" and her e-mail is entitled "I love you Kyra!" Another friend from university writes that he just read my blog and "You are one of the most deeply poetic and spirited people I have ever known (shows too in your writing) and you deserve someone just as amazing. Maybe thats why you are having such trouble find the "right" guy. People of your character and fearless spirit are very rare." Another yoga friend gives me the name of a captain in Greece looking for a yoga instructor through October in two weeks. My sister writes "Miss you my adventurousa sister." So...here is the universe giving me love and love and love just when I most need it. Thank you, universe. I feel better now. I love my friends and family.

Philosophizing, or wallowing in self pity (?), aside, I will discuss the trip through Zanskar. Of course, it was mind altering. Of course, it was beautiful. Of course, it was difficult. Of course, I got sick either from drinking boiled water that had things floating in it and was slightly murky in taste and color or from bathing in the same water in the rivers that were littered on either side with yak, horse, goat, sheep and human feces - hard to tell. I saw the brightest of stars in clear, clean air with the full moon glowing full and majestic among the roaring of Himalayan winds. I wondered at villages seemingly in the middle of nowhere where entire families lived on farms that appeared out of sand and rock, surrounded by impenetrable mountain passes that crumbled under your feet if you got too close to the edge. I was brushed aside by yaks and donkeys and horses on narrow trails and covered like a muslim to avoid too much inhalation of the dust kicked up from their hooves as they teetered along in front of me on the path. I smiled at snot-nosed dusty children, adorable in their filth b/c they were (miraculously, it seemed) well fed and would appear out of nowhere to say "julay" and ask for a pen or chocolate. I drank teas with monks in a monastery built in the 10C BC and b/c I forgot my money at the bottom of the arduous hill, I sang him a song in Sanskrit instead that sought divine guidance, while they beamed at me with obvious amusement.

Every person on the trek was single and in their 30s, save one American student and the two Indian guides in their mid-20s. We got along very well. It lasted 10 days, 136 kms/85 miles and we went over seven peaks from 3200 meters to 5050 meters (10,663 feet to 16,569 feet) up and down and up and down through rivers and valleys and mountains and deserts and sloshy green fields. It was breathtakingly beautiful and just plain breathtaking as we were up at incredible altitudes that made breathing quite difficult. We camped in spartan conditions and ate over a camping stove. We had seven horses for our stuff, two horsemen, a guide and a helper. We bathed in rivers and drank boiled river water. I loved camping, but was really grateful for a hot shower upon my return to Leh. There is much, much more that I will update in a further blog (I wrote it all in my diary this morning for two hours already - I usually write this stuff on a blog, instead - but it was early, oops). Right now, I think I'll go buy a new toothbrush before meeting back up with the group b/c the guide wants to cook us lunch at his house. He's great and will a Bollywood actor someday, I am sure. More adventures and thoughts to come...
I love you world! All is as it should be. I trust that. Even when it's not a bed of roses.