Empty

How do you empty yourself of self while fighting for self-preservation? Are self-preservation and selflessness mutually exclusive? Those are questions that I am being faced with more and more these days. How do I empty myself, pour myself out for our new culture while at the same time cultivating a life that promotes longevity? They must co-exist. As a result of the path that we have chosen for our family, we have to successfully merge both of those numerous times every day. This is one of the many factors that cause you to live each day here at a constant level of higher stress. Higher stress because almost NOTHING is easy and EVERYTHING is different here. Not only that but the cultural differences can boggle the mind sometimes. One minor, but indicative way this played out just the other day, was when I went to my favorite restaurant for lunch. (I say "restaurant" strictly to mean a place where you can buy and consume food. Just to make sure you don't mistakenly create images in your mind that aren't correct, I added pictures of it J). It is 2 carts on the side of street 315 in Phnom Penh. One cart is for making fried rice or noodles and the other is for compressing sugar cane and making sugar cane juice. It is my favorite for several reasons. The food is great and I love the atmosphere and the price is right. I get a plate of fried noodles with an egg on top for 2000 riel (about 50cents), it is out in the open, the guy who runs it is a happy older guy who always wears a "Live with Regis and Kelly" hat and he always gives me a free cup of sugar cane juice. I think he does this because it usually takes a while since he needs to stoke his fire before he starts cooking my noodles. However, today he broke from tradition and gave me a glass of iced tea instead of sugar cane juice. Sugar cane juice seems relatively safe to me because it is naturally contained in the cane and just squeezed out (of course it is added to ice that is less than clean; but I try not to think about that). Iced tea on the other hand is mostly water…the water that most expats never drink. It just might cause some bowel conditions that I won't discuss on our blog J. This being the case, I found myself really pondering whether or not I should consume the free gift. Should I leave my glass "empty" which would communicate appreciation despite the language barrier? Or should I leave it sit and communicate…who knows what? I am sure some of you now are thinking "It is a glass of stinkin' iced tea…not a big deal. Just dump It out. The guy will get over it." I did think that as well but instead I opted to gamble with my bowels. I would rather offend my innards than a man that I am beginning to develop a relationship with. In the grand scheme of things the iced tea may not matter much but I think it is good exercise for my "emptying myself" muscle, muscle that I need here more than almost anything. So I ended up leaving the glass almost empty even though it tasted a little bit like tea flavored lake water. I also ended up leaving with the confidence that I didn't offend him and that we will continue building our relationship as I frequent his "restaurant" more and more.