The Surrender Project: Day 9: Action Eradicates Fear

Today was fun. I was happy to wake up at 8:45 this morning and not 11:00, it really makes the day feel so much longer. Starting the day off positively by not going on my phone and just trying to recall my dreams. Do you ever lay there in the morning after a night of vivid dreams and try to replay them all in your head but you can feel the memory slipping and within thirty seconds you can’t remember a thing? It is so frustrating, especially because I love recalling dreams and I feel like a lot of my dreams are quite happy and crazy stories. Sorry to disappoint, no cool dream stories today, maybe soon. After that I reached over and checked my phone. The thing about living in a time zone 11.5 hours ahead of back home means oftentimes people are contacting you when you’re sleeping so I wake up to multiple notifications. Instead I ignore them all and go onto LinkedIn for some crazy reason. If I have any advice for literally anybody it would be to not go onto LinkedIn a day after you’re feeling out of touch and a bit stressed about what you are doing in a professional sense. Because every post is the people I know getting promoted to some next position I couldn’t even imagine having right now. Good for some of my LinkedIn friends though, y’all are absolutely killing it in the business world back home and I am genuinely happy for you. It definitely made me think about what I was doing today so I started looking for jobs, on LinkedIn. If I was reading somebody else doing this after I read their blog yesterday I would be saying, “what the fuck is this kid doing to himself” as I shook my head. Anyway, job after job seemed quite uninteresting to me and the fear grew for a minute before I saw a job that I genuinely think I would enjoy. If anything it just took away the fear that I wouldn’t be able to find anything when I am back home. I texted my parents and my mom responded with, “you are so funny-all over the board!” Yeah, that is definitely an understatement when it comes to me, a true enneagram 7 if any of you are into that kind of thing. If you are not, I highly recommend the enneagram test as a pretty thorough personality test. It is more than a personality test, with lots of material out there to understand why you behave the way you do in certain situations or feel the ways you do. It is immensely helpful in just understanding yourself. Also very helpful in understanding your partner and where there may be conflicts or areas to give extra attention to in relationships. Plus it is straight up just fun to read about a personality type that seems to fit you so well, it is like reading about yourself (which makes my ego happy). Anyway, I realized my LinkedIn still says I work at the job I quit a year ago… add that to the list of things future Henry has to take care of.

I realize I do not have another night booked so head downstairs to ask if they have any availability for tonight. They are all booked out so I guess it is time to move on, whatever. I head back upstairs and pack up and start talking to Vincent, a Belgium guy I met briefly the night before. I pack up my stuff and leave it in the lobby downstairs as Vincent and I plan to get some breakfast. Which, by the way, will be my first meal with somebody since I had dinner with the fellas from Hyderabad and only the second meal with somebody in India. After I hand in my key and finish tying my shoes to head out for a bit the hostel host calls me over as we are about to walk out the door, “hey, somebody just cancelled their booking. Do you want to take it?” Umm, yes. First of all, of course this feels larger than it should because I am in the middle of this project and everything that happens feels so intentional by the universe. Second, at this point in my travels finding a new hostel or place to stay every few days becomes draining. Most people say they hate packing for trips or long weekends. Well, imagine having to pack every other day or so for months on end. It sucks. Every traveler I have met shares this sentiment. Booked an extra night and then head out with Vincent to grab a bite. We get some street food that runs us $0.50 a person. It is two buns and pav bhaji, a famous Mumbai dish. We grab a tea as well and continue our stroll around. Within a block or two we get waved over where these college kids put on a skit in the street to raise awareness for cancer, it was pretty cool, even if I understood about one and a half words the whole time. We were talking to one of the kids after when this fifty or so year old comes up to me with some crazy energy. He asks “Russia?” But I do not hear him clearly so I say, “what?” And almost with a bit of exacerbation in his voice he goes, “Rrruusssiiaaa?” And I go “no, the states.” Like what a weird opener to a conversation. He proceeds to fire questions at me with little time to respond. I eventually tell him I quit my job to travel and before I can explain he goes, “WHY did you quit your job? You can get paid to travel I know this one woman who started working for a company and now she is the CEO of Coca Cola and she has chartered jets to take her anywhere she wants to go why did you quit? She is making ____ rupees a month A MONTH she didn’t quit she just found a way to get paid or you can do other jobs that you can travel to cool places like Pakistan or India and what did you study in school?” I am convinced he only asked me the question so he could finally take a breath. I mentioned economics and he goes off on another tangent, “you need to get your MBA they make way more money if you get your MBA you can then work your way up and become CEO and travel to places on chartered jets” and eventually I had to be like “yooo! Dude chill I hear you, but this is what I wanted to do, and I do not want my MBA or to be Coca Colas CEO right now, ya feel?” He definitely did not “feel me.” But he did ask my name and then started praying for me on the spot including mentioning how beautiful and blessed my name is? So who knows, maybe some good juju will come from it. I think Vincent got the memo and he interrupts his convo to say that we had to go back and work on our trip or something, leaving the conversation behind. Meanwhile, Vincent just got invited to go on some sort of hike that is four hours away and they want to leave at three in the morning in four days from now. What is going on..? We end up saying maybe and then go on our way. Our way takes us meandering down streets and just talking about life. One of the beautiful things about meeting people traveling is the ability to instantly get into the deep things. Most of the time you know they will only be somebody in your life for a few days and you probably won’t ever see them again, so why not dig into the deep parts of our lives? Within an hour or so, after all the classic travel conversation about where to go/where we have been we find ourselves talking about the idea of self love, and love in general. Of the journeys that we have been on to realize we do not love ourselves as much as we thought we did at one point, and all the steps we took individually to get to a point where we can confidently say that we have self love and know our worth. These conversations are fun, especially when you talk to somebody who is different than you personality wise, and realize they took a completely different path to find self love. Self love is a funny thing, because if you would have asked me two years ago if I had self love I would have answered pretty quickly with a yes. I was confident, I was happy, I knew what love was, I liked myself and was proud of who was. But then you actually find it through a long road and realize that I thought I knew but had so much to learn and grow. I could write a whole blog on self love and some of the steps and things I did to help get towards it, but that is not for today. I say get towards it because I know there is room for more self love, more self acceptance, and more personal growth, always. Anyway, we popped into a mall and an apple store because Vincent needed a quick fix. It is crazy walking from streets with trash everywhere, cows down alleyways, and street stands to a really clean and polished mall. It was beautifully designed, and felt like an even higher quality than some malls back home. We walked through the mall just talking, and even stopped in a West Elm store to get a bit of a feel of fancy life back home. Not that I have anything from West Elm personally, but it felt nice. Honestly it made me miss my bed and get excited to get new sheet and a comforter and all that when I am back. We kept walking and talking, grabbing more tea, some fresh juice, and a paan. Eventually we are walking down a road when a motorcycle pulls over next to/infront of me and stops. At first I do not think anything of it, as this type of thing just happens all the time. But then the guy says “Henry” in a pronunciation of my name I have never heard before. But I look up and realize it is the captain of the team I practiced with two days ago, on a random street at 1:30 in the middle of the day. He shakes my hand and hold up his hands into the camera pose where he pretends to take a picture. Like yes, that is me! I am the camera guy. He says, “5:00. Come?” And I realize he’s inviting me to practice today, so I tell him yeah without really thinking. I don’t think much of it and Vincent and I head back towards the hostel where we compare favorite photographers and he tells me his secret desire to go to Minnesota one day. Wait what?! Did I just meet a Belgium guy who said the one state he wants to go to is Minnesota? A while back he found a photographer who shot northern Minnesota and he said ever since he has wanted to go. Cool. After a bit he heads out to meet a friend and I finish up writing the blog from the night before.

After a bit I get a text from a different player on the team asking if I am coming to practice. I honestly had forgot after running into the captain (who is basically the coach) earlier today. I feel like I have to go at this point, so I say sure and I grab a few things and head over. I am a bit unsure of what to do when I get there, so hang outside the fence and talk to some younger kids about cricket. About a minute later one of the guys sees me and waves me inside. When I say I am having these conversations I just want you to know they are with incredibly pieced together English. I need to remember to slow down my talking to give them a chance to understand some of the words I am saying. Anyway practice, the guy who waves me inside wasn’t even at the practice the other night but asks me if I play. Today it feels a bit different, as he immediately throws me out to be one of about 20 guys scattered around the outfield. At first I am feeling a bit uncomfortable, I do not recognize many of the guys and nobody really knows what I am doing there, me included. Then somebody hits a line-drive at me and I catch it. Everybody is applauding and laughing a bit. After my ‘big play’ the guy next to me starts talking. He has decent English compared to some of the other guys and we can actually have some banter, which helps me ease into it a bit and start enjoying the practice. After this one of the leaders calls me over and tells me it is my turn to bat. By the way, I have no idea if any of these are the correct terms for cricket, I am just using baseball terms. I think it is also fair to note at this point that I have no idea how to play cricket, like I do not know any of the rules. We aren’t playing full games, it is just practice right now, basically “pitching” and “batting” but I think pitching is called bowling? But unsure. If you watch cricket it looks like a slower version of baseball, so when it is my time to bat I am feeling fairly confident I can hit okay. When I get up to the plate and the first pitcher gets a 30 feet running start and then rips the ball to land a few feet before me before it spins hard towards me and I completely miss, is when my confidence starts to go down. Damn, these guys make this shit look so easy! My guys are all cheering me on though with the only advice being, “watch the ball, and then hit the ball” “just watch the ball” like ohhh okay, now it all makes sense, this should be super easy now!! Next pitch same thing but I catch a small piece of it. I guess I do okay because they never knock down one of the three pins behind me, although I am aware I didn’t do particularly well either. After this I hop back into the outfield with my new friend, the guy who has okay English, Sahil. We field a few balls and just enjoy the time. Coach calls me over after a bit because he wants to introduce me to somebody who used to be a famous tennis player? I think Coach has some idea that I am a tennis player, not sure where that got lost in translation. Anyway he comes over and Coach just asks me to take a picture of him and the tennis guy hahaha. Sure, anything for you man. I then take a few more pictures before my camera dies, shit. I end up just hanging around as practice wraps up. This is when it becomes informal and we hit and catch a few more times before I find myself leaning up against the fence with Sahil and his group of friends. Arms crossed just resting, mostly listening to these guys talk in their language as they joke and laugh with each other, occasionally Sahil will translate for me. The group starts to split and I say my goodbyes and walk over to where coach and the older guys are, I say thanks again for letting me crash and they wave it off and tell me, “4:30 tomorrow.” Done. I am not going to miss this.

I start my walk home with such a pep in my step and break out of the present for a minute to reflect on the practice. I feel so comfortable, at ease especially after the last two days feeling a bit off and just anxious. I am feeling back to a place of surrender, of just allowing it to flow without worrying. It felt like I was home in a sense, that I was leaving some beer league practice with my friends and tired from a long day, excited to get back and write and wrap up the day. I don’t know what it was but I must have been giving off this happy energy because as I walked back through some side streets everybody seemed so happy and smiley to me, waving and saying hello as I strolled by. I was grinning at everybody, walking at a decent clip and just feeling content and confident in the day. It was such a good headspace to be in, and it changes the way you see everything. Perspective. The streets do not feel dirty with all their garbage, messes, people, and things. They feel cozy and lived in, like so many people call this little area of Mumbai that I am staying in home, and it felt that way. There are fruit stands everywhere, on every corner selling bananas, apples, oranges, papaya, grapes—so many grapes—and just about anything else you can find. There are groups of men standing around the tea shops, sipping their two oz of tea and smoking a cigarette as they are finally off the clock. The women sit around in their beautiful garb, feeling so content to be sitting and watching as they are working their vegetable stands. Kids are playing cricket in the streets, with the balls flying everywhere and the others just grab it and throw it back, like there is nothing you can do wrong when cricket is involved. Stands are selling food left and right, little bites to tide the people over until dinner time. The streets get so busy and full of life around this time, right after sunset. The weather feels like a warm summer evening, with just a bit extra stuffiness in the air. I know my way around this area now, and realize that after a few days settling into a place is when you start to actually see the magic around you. Feeling in a good mood I reflect a bit on where this comes from. How do I get to the point of getting out of a little funk. A quote that I used to have written on a sticky note on my computer at my sales job pops into my mind, “action eradicates fear.” I do not know where this quote comes from or where I read it, but it is so true. It can be so easy to get stuck in the fears or anxiety of what is to come that you get stuck in a cycle of not wanting to do anything and unsure of where to go. How many times have you heard somebody give the advice, “just start.” It is the same idea. If we remove the thinking and planning and just start at something, that’s when we move past these fears. I have a theory as to why this works, and no surprise but it has to do with presence. That when we are actively doing something it pushes us into presence because we are focused on what we are doing. And presence is where all the magic is at. So, action creates magic based on the transitive property (shoutout 9th grade geometry). Take working out for example. Whenever you go to the gym and are actively moving weights your mind probably isn’t elsewhere. Yeah, you can think a bit and your mind can wander in-between sets, but when you are actively pushing a barbell off of your chest with force your mind probably isn’t thinking about what you are going to eat for dinner, it is focused on pushing this weight off your chest. I feel like I can come up with a hundred examples. Writers being told to just pick up a pen and start writing if you are in writer block, about anything. Sometimes when I used to journal regularly I would start out with, “I am not sure what I am going to write about, I feel like not a lot happened today. I wonder if I will ever read this again” and next thing I know I have written about complex feelings I had and realizations from the day over 1,000 words. Or sitting on top of a cliff jumping spot looking down at the water thirty feet below. The longer you sit their the scarier it gets, but if you just go for it everything works out and you realize there was nothing to fear in the first place (unless it is shallow water off some hike in Moab). The nice thing about being in the same spot for a bit is that it also allows for a stronger feeling of arriving home when you get back to the place you are staying. Sometimes these comforts are good. I question the balance of allowing these comforts and to happen while also knowing that my objective is to get uncomfortable and push myself into feelings that challenge me. I think I want another day or two here before I move on though, I mean I am basically on a cricket team now, I cannot leave the fellas hanging!

Since I am feeling light and present I decide it would be a good time to do a meditation, specifically a Vipassana meditation because Vincent was just telling me about a ten day vipassana mediation retreat he did that he loved. I think a meditation retreat is in my future without a doubt. After a solid meditation I head to get some food and end up at this nicer spot where I get chicken Korma (or something similar) with two big buttered roti as well. It is so beyond tasty. At this point I like to eat like they do, so with my right hand as I rip the roti and scoop up some of the chicken and all the spices and sauce into it. By the end my hand is filthy, but they do this thing that I absolutely love here. They bring you a warm bowl of water, borderline hot, with a lime in it. You then take the life out and just squeeze it and play with it between your fingers to help clean it off and take away the strong smell of the curries and all the spices. It just leaves you feeling refreshed after the meal. This was an expensive meal for sure, coming out to 480 rupees, which is about $6. But sometimes I feel like I can splurge a bit on a meal like this. Especially because the service is top notch. They bring the food to the table and serve some of it onto your plate, and when I order two roti they only bring out one, bringing the second right as I finish the first so it stays hot and fresh. Class. I head back to do some writing, as it is already getting to be around 10:00 and writing these blogs takes a few hours. My brother Gage calls me and we catch up a bit around 11:00 and after sharing with him about my day he is laughing and thinks it is so crazy that I am like becoming a part of a local cricket team here, as an honorary member that is. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective on your situation to notice how special it is. It kind of hits me that it is quite a cool experience that I got invited to this cricket game one time because I was sitting outside of the field, and then two days later run into the coach on a random street who invites me back. Now I think I will go everyday until it is time to move on. That is a special experience and I am grateful for it, especially it being a game that isn’t really played back home, yet so wildly popular here and in other places in the world.

As I am talking to Gage at 11:30 or so somebody walks into the hostel common area, where I am currently the only person, and the person at the reception. I look up and the guy goes, “Henry!” And I realize it is one of my teammates. I am so confused as to what is happening but he just goes in his very broken English, “I was out with friends and wanted to see you so I came to your hostel!” Like what the heck! Obviously most peoples first reaction would be like, “uhhh what the heck man, it is almost midnight what are you doing here?” But I think this is just the openness that people live with here, so I say what’s up and he ends up hanging out with me for around 45 minutes. He said he wanted to be there to keep me company so I wasn’t alone. Haha the heart of these guys while I am just trying to write.

Another day in the life here in Mumbai, and this one felt good. It felt nice to feel so apart of the community. To have my team, my tea guy, my breakfast spot, and the guy I buy two bananas from everyday. Maybe the lesson beneath all of this is patience, to just be patient when times are hard. I know this is a weird example because the “hard times” were basically a day or two, but I think the lesson can still be applied. Also based on other low points in my life where I came out of it. That no matter if it is a low day, a low week, or a low year, that having some patience and trust will take you out of it. And to still try and have just a bit of gratitude for the low days, because they are just as important as the high ones. Oh, and action eradicates fear, this is one I am quite convinced is true. I should probably get some sleep now, gotta be rested for practice tomorrow.