Proximal recapitulation

6Dec10, 7am: personal training with Wallace...

whoa... I got my ass kicked and handed back to me... 3x6 abs circuit with cardio in between, 3x6 arms/shoulders circuit with cardio in between, then 16 min. on treadmill doing sprints... no wonder I'm dead! It was good though... other than the morning breath of my trainer... found a way to ignore it and get a killer work-out... back to good old proximity... a topic I began discussing in a previous post and will no doubt come back to often!

I mentioned the guy sitting next to me on my flight from HKG to TPE … how our discussion was amazing, but the entire time, his face was about 100mm from me... no joke... and he had just eaten his in-flight lunch of Chinese noodles... I left it somewhat hanging because I wanted to devote some time to thinking about it... I’ll continue now…

After this experience on the plane and then lately seeing ancient Chinese artifacts and learning more and more about the history of this part of Asia, I’m reminded abouthow old this part of the world is… not just historically speaking… but spiritually, culturally… it’s something that North Americans don’t readily wrap their head around as both Canada and the U.S. are so young incomparison. I think I’m at least more familiar with European history, which makes sense, given my heritage

and ancestry. Asian history, however… a whole different cup of tea! Yesterday I saw some art from the Tang Dynasty… that’s from the 7^th century! Not only artistic masterpieces and architecture, but there is also so much history in the types of government and ruling styles, some of which we still see today, in some form or another.

Speaking of which, the guy sitting next to me on the plane enlightened me a bit. He was telling me how he was Taiwanese but that his parents were originally from mainland China but were both dead now. During the Chinese civil war, his father was a part of the KMT (Kuomintang, anti-communist army). According to Wiki, “the KMT was founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen shortly after the Xinhai Revolution. Later led by Chiang Kai-shek, it ruled much of China from 1928 until its retreat to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated by the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the Chinese Civil War. There, the KMT controlled the government under a single party state until reforms in the late 1970s through the 1990s loosened its grip on power.” In the late 40s and early 50s, things were really bad with the Soviet, Korean, and Chinese (communist, cold war) involvement combined… the Korean war… and many mainland Chinese people were fleeing, either to Taiwan or Hong Kong.

This guy told me that his parents got an opportunity to get on a midnight boat to Taiwan one night about 60 years ago. I guess the father was afraid for his life, and they wanted out from communist rule. They hadn’t given birth to him yet, but they already had two daughters, one that was very young… an infant probably less than 1 year and the other was 5 years old. The catch was they couldn’t take children for fear of being discovered late in the night if a baby cried. So they planned to leave alone, this guy tells me. He remembers his father telling him stories about what it was like… his mom pacing and his eldest sister suspecting something was wrong because her mother was dressed differently that day and acting nervous. The eldest daughter was apparently very clingy and into the night she was pried out of her mother’s arms and into the arms of her auntie, never to see her mother again. The parents left their two daughters in the care of the sister… never to be seen again. In fact, this guy said that his mother literally worried herself to death over the following year. The father and this guy weren’t allowed to contact mainland to look for them until 40 years later! Still in mainland China, I’m told that neither sister is well off at all. Both were haunted by the specific event that separated them from their family but then forever because of their father’s affiliation with the KMT. Neither could marry anyone but only the lowest class Chinese citizens, which were opera singers and taxi drivers. They were shunned throughout the majority of their life for their familial association, which for one of them only lasted a mere year!

All this time, I’m getting a rich history lesson about Taiwan and how it became a haven for the Chinese and the reasons why, but this older gentleman was also pouring his heart out via his life story, most of which I will never even fathom in my entire lifetime.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now, almost a week, as I flew to Taiwan last Tuesday. The first thoughts that I had that afternoon were regarding proximity. For me, this was – I’m sure – one of many turning points for me in learning about myself and the fluid concepts of proximity as well as space and time. With regard to proximity, I found myself asking myself to please take in this moment, get beyond the smell of Chinese noodles, the intermittent belching, and the misty spray of someone talking very closely, the seeming “invasion of personal space”… and really listen to this man, listen with compassion… imagine how he must feel… imagine how his mother and sisters and father must have felt.

Proximity is a tough one... it makes people uncomfortable. It's not necessarily painful or harming or even inconvenient... it just touches on the idea of personal space that some of us have gotten used to having a lot of!!!! I have been in this place of uncomfortable… about so many things and for so long… Personal space is HUGE for me, and like I mentioned in my the first blog about this plane ride, is “the apex of the triangle in my opinion, and the last, hardest concept for me to understand...” I’m uncomfortable in my own skin most of the time, which has limited me endlessly. I don’t feel good being in such close proximity to a stranger (and sometimes even people I know well), which I’m sure has caused me to miss out on a lot in life, as it would have in this case. I’m not saying that by letting others be in close proximity to me, from now on, will allow me to have a richer life. What I’m thinking is that in this particular case, I acknowledged the barriers that usually prevent me from this kind of encounter and chose to put them aside. I don’t believe this always to be the solution, as I think we have barriers and warning signs that we definitely need to heed as protection. Always building walls and setting up barriers, however, is not likely the key to an enriched, loving, and fulfilling life.

Proximity… hmm...