The Long Flight to Bangkok, Thailand
They say your twenties are your years of freedom. They say your twenties are the last shot you have. They are one last hopelessly dwindling opportunity to define who you are, and what you are, before the cold hands of reality take hold of your life. I’m not so sure about all that, but this much, I think, is true: the twenties—the decade that leads up to that invisible line dividing youthful energy and ambition, the freedom to wear sweatpants in public without shame, and age-appropriate penchants for Taco Bell with toddlers, mortgage payments, diet soft drinks, and fully receded hairlines—the twenties are by and large the time to find yourself.
I thought about this fatefully vague adage the entire 16 hours of my flight from Chicago to Hong Kong. At twenty-five, I was in the peak of my “find myself” years. Half of my friends were in graduate school or considering applying for graduate school and the other half either were ladder-climbing young professionals or had changed professions a dozen times already. We were all looking for ourselves, even if we didn’t know we were lost. My odyssey was taking me to a place I’d hardly even thought about until I signed up for a TEFL course on a whim: Thailand.
It was November, about a week before Thanksgiving. I was sitting cross-legged, with Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 on my lap, and still trying to process the dramatic curve that events in my life had taken. I had resigned my own professional job at the start of June and spent the summer working for a running company (i.e. selling shoes, sports bras, GU, and stuff like that) and reading a lot of books. One night, while leafing through a Matsuo Basho book of travel sketches, I stopped on a line—“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.” The air was thick outside; it was the start of August, the dog days, when life comes to a standstill in Midwestern America. Even the birds had become languid, retreating to ponds and refusing to chirp in the sticky heat. In that delirious heat, I decided on a path, totally unsure of what I was doing, but feeling very liberated.
Now, I was almost there. The thought hadn’t escaped me. I was too groggy to think deeply, though, so I vacantly eyed the terminal. At 9 pm, the airport sort of hummed with activity, like a shopping mall shortly before closing time. Only a couple of flights were scheduled to depart in the coming hours. Not many people hung around the seats in the terminal. The two most popular spots were the smoking rooms and the single computer with Internet access, which had drawn a line the length of a fire hose. And so I was sitting, alone and oblivious, when a woman came up and sat next to me.
“Nice shoes,” she said, pointing at my pumpkin-colored New Balance Minimus. She was older, middle-aged. She had close-cropped hair and wore glasses. When I looked over, I saw her pointing at her feet with a smile spread across her face. She had on a pair of purple Minimus. “So where are you headed?”
We got to talking, and we talked for a while. She was on her way to Bhutan for a 6-week tour of the reclusive kingdom. She had only recently retired from her role as race director of a major American marathon. At first blush, it sounded like a dream job to me. So I asked her about it.
“Best job I’ve ever had,” she said, “and the worst, too. Not much time to do anything. That’s why I’m out here now, making up for lost time.”
She asked a lot about me. I gave her the most honest answers I could. Her daughter, she said, had just come back from teaching in Thailand. Living in the rural Northeast, she had become fluent in Thai. When she returned home, her fluency had helped to land her a job with an NGO that worked with Thai immigrants. Now, she was happier than ever and on an upward trend.
“You never know what’s going to happen in life. Isn’t that right,” said the rather sage woman in the hard-back seat next to me. “Well, it’s good you’re doing this. It’s going to be an amazing experience and you’ll never forget it.” And, with that, she wished me good luck. After we boarded the plane, I never saw her again.
No one ever tells you where or how you’re supposed to spend your years of freedom, or how much time you’ve got to do it. You’re just instructed not to waste them. The rest, they say, is up to you.
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