My most productive moments of thought are often ill-timed, coming when I have either no access to writing instruments or when recording would require me to distance myself from the event that sparked such thoughts in the first place.They’re fleeting moments and once passed, inspiration wanes or my thoughts no longer seem relevant.
It was a rare occasion that I had paper and pen on hand when the following train of thought cropped up. Further pondering on the subject has produced contradictions to some of what I’m about to write but I’ve decided to share with you, my thoughts at the time.
It was a reflective moment in which I’d stepped outside myself and looked at my life as though it were a stranger’s. While inside myself, I’m surrounded by the realities of the mundane and routine parts of my life. Regardless of surroundings, I’m still me, living much as I would anywhere else. But a few steps removed, seeing the summary rather than the details, I realized how exciting and “exotic” my life sounded.
When I told people I was going to Cambodia for a year, a few expressed how brave they thought me, particularly when I expressed a lack of nervousness over the unknowns in my future. (Of course I wanted to know more about what to expect but I didn’t consider it worth any anxiety over before even getting there.) Perhaps I shrugged off their words a little because compliments make me uncomfortable. I feel a bit of a fraud with words like “brave” and “adventurous” applied to me. I’m actually a bit of a homebody. Whether I’m in the US or Cambodia, I’m pretty content to stay in my room during my free time. It takes an effort to get myself out the door for something like a day trip or evening and afternoon exploration of the village.
Or perhaps it was because, after making my own way to Korea, it would seem silly to get nervous over a year in which so many of the boring and difficult details are taken care of by others (Visas, plane tickets, making reservations).
Or maybe it has something to do with the second word that popped into my head: “exotic”. It was that word and my instant dislike of it that led my thoughts further. What comes to mind when you hear the word? Think about it for a second before you read on.
It’s one thing to label experiences as fun and exciting because they’re new and outside one’s normal routine. It’s another thing if it’s simply termed exotic. There’s nothing wrong per se in the word itself but rather in the way people use it.
For me, “Exotic” indicates something mysterious and strange, something so alien and different from anything known that it can’t even be related to. When the word is applied to people, those people tend to become either sub-human or superhuman in our eyes, neither of which provide foundations for healthy relationship building. The word so heavily emphasizes that which is different and incomprehensible that we become blind to the similarities. People stop being distinct individuals and become symbolic representations of our stereotypes and assumptions.
When applied to places the terms tends to encompass the people who live there as well.
So while Cambodia is in many ways different from the USA and Korea, it is anything but exotic. I’ve had experiences that are new and exciting and outside of my normal routine but even they make up what has become my daily life here. And that’s what I’m doing mostly, just living much as I would anywhere else in the world. The only differences are relatively minor details like how I shower, what my food tastes like, the language and culture. It’s perhaps the only time I would consider those last two, “minor details”.
I’ve been told it before and even realized it myself but people are a lot more similar than I’d sometimes like to think. Geography and culture may produce different external representations of humanity, but we are all people who live, breathe, love, and die on a planet that seems increasingly smaller. Though I would argue that a smaller world isn’t necessarily good, a positive result of that could be and increased level of inter-connectedness that destroys boundaries created to keep “the other” out and creates bridges of understanding.
While it may sound less interesting to say that I’m over here, living a “normal” life as I would anywhere else, there’s a kind of beautiful magic in normalcy. Daily life as well as moments like trips to the river and visits to Laiheak’s home village may look different on the outside but they are steeped in the things that make us all human and relatable. These moments become special because of the connections we can draw to our own lives “back home”. It’s from a place of familiarity and similarity that we can appreciate the subtle differences.
So, if you get nothing else out of this post and my entire blog, I hope you come to see Cambodia as a country uniquely its own yet familiar and relatable: filled with people, food, history and culture, beautiful and not so beautiful things. It’s where real people live, taking for granted those mundane details just as you and I do in our own lives.
If there’s any time I could condone the use of the word “exotic” it would be when used as a tool to help us step outside our own cultures and lives, to view them with new eyes.
Look at the daily parts of your life and wonder how it might appear to someone who may not do things the same way. Imagine what it would be like to adopt the norms of a different culture into your life. For example: many people in Cambodia get around by motorbike rather than cars. If your daily routine involves a lot of driving, try to imagine what it would be like to take a motorbike everywhere instead. Notice those things you often overlook or take for granted, and marvel at them.
Living Liminally in Cambodia 