Are You Out There?

I recently read an amazing book called Learning to Breathe by Alison Wright. Alison is a photojournalist, traveling the world in search of photos that reach through the pages and touch our souls. She has documented through her lens; pictures of war torn places, she has captured the light in the eyes of children living in poverty, the hands of those that toil daily through insurmountable hardships. She almost died on a twisting road in Lao.

I was on that very same road, traveling on a similar bus. By a twist of fate, Alison's bus was hit head on by a truck. By a twist of fate, mine wasn't. Through one moment in time of jagged metal piercing her body, her entire life was changed. And me? There was no moment of physical distress upon that road. What I remember on that road was a window open, my face pressed into the wind. Tears of loneliness and a wall reaching around me that told others to stay away, to not talk to me or even look at me.

I have been thinking a lot about life and death lately, how the choices we make today in this very moment, trace the course of our lives. How so quickly people can be taken from us or how they make the choice to leave us. And how we must honor the decisions people make in their own lives, honor them and know that in the end, at the very end of twisting roads, all that is left is love.

I think about the people around the world that I have met and wonder if their choices at this moment are the same ones I experienced while in their atmosphere. I think of government officials in the dead of the night in an airport in Indonesia, automatic rifles slung across shoulders, stopping to listen to Irish boys play ColdPlay on their guitars and my off key singing. I think about a tuk-tuk driver in Chiang Mai, Thailand delivering me safely to my guest house lamenting how he will never be able to leave the city and country he was born in. Are you out there?

Are you out there girl in the torn, dirty dress? I met you in a tiny village in India. You listened to my music through headphones, the Avett Brothers. You smiled shyly at me and touched my arm, touching skin so different than yours. I didn't know where I was or how I would be able to leave your village, yet through the terror I felt at that moment, your smile stays with me. Are you out there? Are your choices the same?

I think of the old woman in Vietnam and sobbing in her arms. She touched the back of my head, caressing my hair and communicating in the only language that we both spoke. Love. I hope you are out there, you probably don't remember me, but your kindness is a part of me now.

It's all of you that live in my heart, all of the people I have met, all of the people that I know. Their are moments when I feel as though I can't breathe, as though the heart you live in has been shattered into a million pieces and it is in those moments that I think of you. You made the choice to be kind, to be loving. In the end, perhaps those are the only choices that matter.

Are you out there? Can you feel the love I am sending you?

"Now, instead of floating away the radiance came closer, enveloping me in a warm, pulsating luminosity and unconditional love. I no longer felt alone. I felt held."-Alison Wright

Peace, love, and joy

Lara