Night Walking

It’s amazing the things that can befall someone when he or she rents a plywood beach hut for $7 per night. Most recently, the “someone” was yours truly and what befell me was a conversation with the owner of this establishment, a Nepalese man name Bijan, who works here on Palolem Beach in South Goa 8 months out of the year so that he can make money to support his family more efficiently than in Nepal, where wages are low and work is scarce.

Before this conversation, I was just sitting down on the plastic lawn chair on the makeshift porch of this little plywood beach hut to rest my sore knee after the second of two moonlit walks up and down Palolem, during which I thought about my priorities in life, the value of work, what exactly I’ve been doing in Austin the past three years, what I plan to do when and if I go back, and ultimately, the purpose of my life. All of these bullet points, however, were (attempting, thus far stalling) to answer one question: do Dora and I make our way to Darjeeling tomorrow or stay here, where perfect strangers approach you and begin to speak with you about exactly what was ricocheting around the inside of your skull the moment it stops ricocheting?

Prior to Bijan hobbling over to me from the beach shack restaurant and bar attached to the village of huts, a cane in his left hand and a cigarette in his right, I’d just returned from the second of two moonlit walks up and down Palolem, a fact I’ve already stated, but that bears repeating because of it having been the second and that there were two. At the beginning of the first, when I turned left on the beach against my better judgment, I turned my head just after turning at the South end of the beach and met eyes with Ryan, a man from Idaho who also just happened to want to talk about the very things that I was thinking about. It’s amazing the things that can befall someone when he or she walks alone at night among others walking alone at night among others walking alone at night.

And it’s amazing to me that I’m considering cutting out an entire leg of the trip (a consideration for which Dora too has her own reasons), one that includes seeing the Himalayas and the most sacred city in Hinduism, to remain among the wild packs of dogs, whole Tandoori cooked Tuna, and familiar strangers of Palolem.

So back to that.

What the ultimate answer to this question will really come down to is this: what is my purpose? Immediately, said purpose is the purpose of this trip. On a broader level, as I walked through the mushy sand wet by the evening tide where a newborn puppy with Sasquatch paws played cricket with Indian boys just hours before, however, I simplified the equation: why travel 30 hours to see the world’s highest mountain when a broad and wide path to happiness starts at your doorstep and leads in every direction? This is not only the case for me here in my little beach hut, but indeed in my daily life. When I become content somewhere, I instantly begin finding flaws in things so that I have motivation to go somewhere else. But why?

Is it for the sake of adding another notch to my belt? “I saw Mount Everest today, and I’m going to Varanasi tomorrow” and “I made $300 today and I want to make $400 tomorrow” are two statements that inevitably conjure the same perplexion: do you want a fucking medal?

At the end of the day, I booked three weeks in India to disconnect from the way I’ve been living my life, so as to find a more fulfilling way forward. To mandate to myself that the vacation must take me to every place I planned to go in order to be successful is to ensure disappointment. Which is not to say that Darjeeling among the Himalayas or Varanasi on the Ganges would be disappointing, but more broadly to say that I’ve spent the past 24 years chasing happiness. I have happiness right now. If I leave this happiness tomorrow and continue the chase for the sake of continuing the chase, then what does that actually say about the success of my vacation?

To make a decision with such familiar logic would be to negate the very concept of vacation, methinks.

Ryan offered me as a parting gift—and I say gift lightly, as I don’t imagine he actually knew how blessed I felt to receive it—a profound truth: you can get as much love as you want, but you can never keep it.

“What can I do?” Bijan asked shortly before stumbling over to the beyond my hut to investigate a disturbance he saw, in reference to my question as to whether or not his working situation left him, ultimately, happy.

I know his question was rhetorical, but I know the answer: be. A prerequisite, as well as a guarantee, for happiness is to be. That is the answer.

It’s amazing the things you learn in Goa.