Malaika
The Force is Strong With This One
Hello to all friends of the forum!
I feel a little lost because of the experience I'm living and some light would be useful.
I put you in context:
The closure of borders in March by the covid19 surprised me while traveling in the Pacific, on a small island in a country I didn't even know existed, Tuvalu. The country is free of virus.
Because of its geographical isolation and its low level of development, connections with the outside world were already very limited and since March non-existent, so I've been isolated here for 6 months as its borders remain closed.
It is not a tourist country, I'm the only traveler here at the moment.
I arrived in Tuvalu from Fiji Islands where I started my 6 month trip in January without much planning.
I volunteered for a couple of months in projects rebuilding houses damaged by Cyclone Winston and permaculture.
I got to know Tuvalu in a causal way during my stay in Fiji, the circumstances were there and I had the option of boarding a merchant ship to Tuvalu, I'm attracted to remote and inaccessible places.
At the beginning of closing borders I wasn't worried, I thought that the situation would be solved soon, I even thought about my good luck, the cosmic mind had given me the best prison for lockdown in a paradise island free of virus and far from the reality that was being lived in Spain by the news that was coming to me, the health collapse, the strict confinement and social isolation and the fear that everyone felt generated mostly by the media, I wasn't suffering anything like that here and it seemed to me that I was being told a science fiction movie.
My idea was to return to Spain in May, when my trip was over and I had to resume my work and daily life.
The authorities of Tuvalu didn't give me any information, everything was very uncertain and I decided to contact the Spanish consulates of nearby countries like Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, hoping that they would help me get out of here somehow. Obviously this wasn't the case, their messages full of empty diplomatic words speculating about remote possibilities that never materialized provoked, over the months, very strong emotions of helplessness, frustration and anger.
I had the opportunity in July to be on spanish newspapers and my case reached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but nothing changed.
My emotional process has been stumbling and I've tried to figure out what my lesson is here.
First of all, faced with the uncertainty of not knowing when or how I would be able to return to Spain, I came to the conclusion that this was a wonderful opportunity to work on patience and confidence that things will work out when the time comes.
I was hosted by a local family of 14 people, which has allowed me to enter the culture as one of the family.
Living together in the house generated different internal conflicts.
It's an island culture very taken to the extreme where a collective energy of laziness reigns and if you are not attentive it catches you. I found this detail curious, since I consider myself an active and dynamic person and that the universe would have given me this golden prison "in appearance" but where its habitants spend most of their time lying in the hammock doing nothing, I thought this was also a good lesson for me, to learn to do nothing and also to see my reflection on the lazyness mirrow...I'm lazy too in many aspects of my life that I don't like to look at ..
The rules of hygiene and respect very opposed to mine were another resistance to overcome, for a time I was tormented by continuous mental conversations based on criticism and judgment of others and my mood was conditioned by how others acted, my blood boiled to see everyone lying in the house without even bothering to collect and clean their dirty plate after eating that ended up being grassed by ants and bugs for days.
Finally I appreciated that it was my attitude focused on external criticism that caused my discomfort, the others do nothing against me, they do the better than they know with the tools they have, I can't control what others do but I can decide what my attitude is towards what others do,
I started to clean up what was bothering me and bring my attention to what I was doing, this changed my focus and perspective and freed me from the criticism and judgment that was evidently talking about me and not them, even though it was hard for me to see myself reflected in the mirror.
The uncertainty of when I could return to Spain was still latent and so my helplessness and frustration, I understood that these feelings were provoked by myself because the reality did not fit my expectations, I abandoned the expectations gradually and accepted my reality trying to take advantage of my time here learning local crafts, exercising, yoga, reading, writing, beach, ukulele, walks.
Six months have passed, and my last reflections have led me to the conclusion that, contradictorily to what it means to be "imprisoned" against my will, I believe that this is the moment in my life when I am most free. This place has liberated me from practically all my addictions and external distractions to which I continually resort to avoid feeling the emptiness that is inside me.
First of all, it has freed me from the tremendous slavery of work for 8 hours a day,
I no longer have to work to make money; the modern addiction par excellence : social networks and the Internet have vanished to 70% I would say, I have no data so I no longer live by my cell phone although it is true that I am still addicted and I come to connect to the wifi almost every afternoon for an hour. The soil is not fertile, it does not grow anything, neither marijuana, one of my sporadic addictions also eliminated; I do not have friends of confidence with whom to escape with a few beers or to speak of my sensations, it has been a long time since I have tried a drop of alcohol and my conversations with the locals are quite superficial: social relations eliminated.
The sexual market does not attract me, there is no television or radio in my house and even the biggest of my escape routes is gone: traveling; being in continuous movement and projecting,; also outside, everything is gone, all my chains, here we are my loneliness and I, my emptiness and I looking at us from the front, and then I say to myself ... well actually this is life ... free of conditionings and external complements and self-imposed needs... this is freedom! then my life before has no sense... however I feel impotence and frustration and I want to return home imperiously, why? is it because I am so addicted to slavery that I want to return to my chains because that is where I feel comfortable...?? and I vent my anger on the consulate because I am waiting for someone to come and save me when no one is going to save me from anything...maybe that's the lesson...I don't know...I think about Mandela...Gandhi...Mujica...all these characters that were held captive for a long time...I even recently read "Man in Search of Meaning" by Victor Frank, a psychologist who survived the Auswitch extermination camp. Of course, nothing like this can be compared with my experience, but I feel identified in some way with how the experience of being in a place against your will without any certainty of when it will end, makes you stronger...
Starting from the base that we are corresponding with our experiences and these are absolutely necessary for our development, I want to think that what is happening to me is a great opportunity and the situation will be resolved when I'm able to see the lesson, but I sincerely believe that I have lost the perspective ...
I feel a little lost because of the experience I'm living and some light would be useful.
I put you in context:
The closure of borders in March by the covid19 surprised me while traveling in the Pacific, on a small island in a country I didn't even know existed, Tuvalu. The country is free of virus.
Because of its geographical isolation and its low level of development, connections with the outside world were already very limited and since March non-existent, so I've been isolated here for 6 months as its borders remain closed.
It is not a tourist country, I'm the only traveler here at the moment.
I arrived in Tuvalu from Fiji Islands where I started my 6 month trip in January without much planning.
I volunteered for a couple of months in projects rebuilding houses damaged by Cyclone Winston and permaculture.
I got to know Tuvalu in a causal way during my stay in Fiji, the circumstances were there and I had the option of boarding a merchant ship to Tuvalu, I'm attracted to remote and inaccessible places.
At the beginning of closing borders I wasn't worried, I thought that the situation would be solved soon, I even thought about my good luck, the cosmic mind had given me the best prison for lockdown in a paradise island free of virus and far from the reality that was being lived in Spain by the news that was coming to me, the health collapse, the strict confinement and social isolation and the fear that everyone felt generated mostly by the media, I wasn't suffering anything like that here and it seemed to me that I was being told a science fiction movie.
My idea was to return to Spain in May, when my trip was over and I had to resume my work and daily life.
The authorities of Tuvalu didn't give me any information, everything was very uncertain and I decided to contact the Spanish consulates of nearby countries like Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, hoping that they would help me get out of here somehow. Obviously this wasn't the case, their messages full of empty diplomatic words speculating about remote possibilities that never materialized provoked, over the months, very strong emotions of helplessness, frustration and anger.
I had the opportunity in July to be on spanish newspapers and my case reached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but nothing changed.
My emotional process has been stumbling and I've tried to figure out what my lesson is here.
First of all, faced with the uncertainty of not knowing when or how I would be able to return to Spain, I came to the conclusion that this was a wonderful opportunity to work on patience and confidence that things will work out when the time comes.
I was hosted by a local family of 14 people, which has allowed me to enter the culture as one of the family.
Living together in the house generated different internal conflicts.
It's an island culture very taken to the extreme where a collective energy of laziness reigns and if you are not attentive it catches you. I found this detail curious, since I consider myself an active and dynamic person and that the universe would have given me this golden prison "in appearance" but where its habitants spend most of their time lying in the hammock doing nothing, I thought this was also a good lesson for me, to learn to do nothing and also to see my reflection on the lazyness mirrow...I'm lazy too in many aspects of my life that I don't like to look at ..
The rules of hygiene and respect very opposed to mine were another resistance to overcome, for a time I was tormented by continuous mental conversations based on criticism and judgment of others and my mood was conditioned by how others acted, my blood boiled to see everyone lying in the house without even bothering to collect and clean their dirty plate after eating that ended up being grassed by ants and bugs for days.
Finally I appreciated that it was my attitude focused on external criticism that caused my discomfort, the others do nothing against me, they do the better than they know with the tools they have, I can't control what others do but I can decide what my attitude is towards what others do,
I started to clean up what was bothering me and bring my attention to what I was doing, this changed my focus and perspective and freed me from the criticism and judgment that was evidently talking about me and not them, even though it was hard for me to see myself reflected in the mirror.
The uncertainty of when I could return to Spain was still latent and so my helplessness and frustration, I understood that these feelings were provoked by myself because the reality did not fit my expectations, I abandoned the expectations gradually and accepted my reality trying to take advantage of my time here learning local crafts, exercising, yoga, reading, writing, beach, ukulele, walks.
Six months have passed, and my last reflections have led me to the conclusion that, contradictorily to what it means to be "imprisoned" against my will, I believe that this is the moment in my life when I am most free. This place has liberated me from practically all my addictions and external distractions to which I continually resort to avoid feeling the emptiness that is inside me.
First of all, it has freed me from the tremendous slavery of work for 8 hours a day,
I no longer have to work to make money; the modern addiction par excellence : social networks and the Internet have vanished to 70% I would say, I have no data so I no longer live by my cell phone although it is true that I am still addicted and I come to connect to the wifi almost every afternoon for an hour. The soil is not fertile, it does not grow anything, neither marijuana, one of my sporadic addictions also eliminated; I do not have friends of confidence with whom to escape with a few beers or to speak of my sensations, it has been a long time since I have tried a drop of alcohol and my conversations with the locals are quite superficial: social relations eliminated.
The sexual market does not attract me, there is no television or radio in my house and even the biggest of my escape routes is gone: traveling; being in continuous movement and projecting,; also outside, everything is gone, all my chains, here we are my loneliness and I, my emptiness and I looking at us from the front, and then I say to myself ... well actually this is life ... free of conditionings and external complements and self-imposed needs... this is freedom! then my life before has no sense... however I feel impotence and frustration and I want to return home imperiously, why? is it because I am so addicted to slavery that I want to return to my chains because that is where I feel comfortable...?? and I vent my anger on the consulate because I am waiting for someone to come and save me when no one is going to save me from anything...maybe that's the lesson...I don't know...I think about Mandela...Gandhi...Mujica...all these characters that were held captive for a long time...I even recently read "Man in Search of Meaning" by Victor Frank, a psychologist who survived the Auswitch extermination camp. Of course, nothing like this can be compared with my experience, but I feel identified in some way with how the experience of being in a place against your will without any certainty of when it will end, makes you stronger...
Starting from the base that we are corresponding with our experiences and these are absolutely necessary for our development, I want to think that what is happening to me is a great opportunity and the situation will be resolved when I'm able to see the lesson, but I sincerely believe that I have lost the perspective ...