Courage in the Morning Light
The city was dark, and I felt heavy from hours of travel. Having arrived after the sun had set, while the air was still humid from the day’s monsoon heat, I sat at the edge of my small slat bed, in the middle of Kathmandu Valley, bewildered by strangeness. I could hear packs of wild dogs howling in the alleys below, while street kids yelled wildly, chasing each other through the night.
I ordered a bottle of cheap beer, and then sat in my near empty room, trying to gather some semblance of quiet to my scattered mind. Alone and only just eighteen, I began to realize just how terrifying it was to be all the way across the world from everyone I knew. How important a journey this would become in my life, I could not then, have even begun to know.
Hours crept by. Dawn was looming, and I still hadn’t slept, my nerves raw from fear. In one last ditch effort, I gathered up my blankets and wandered off to find a good vantage point to watch the sunrise. I had seen very little on my drive into town besides shanty shacks and men gathered around barrel fires. This was not the Nepal I had seen in National Geographic.
I climbed the winding staircase all the way to the top and was relieved when a cool breeze met my flushed cheeks. There was no door between stairwell and rooftop, only a flat expanse of warm cement, chipped away over time, eroded by monsoon rain.
I sat, stunned, by the night sky. An ocean of stars spread over me, soothing my frantic nerves until I had all but forgotten my panic. I had just sat down on the tiled, rooftop floor when dawn light crept suddenly over the easter ridges of the Kathmandu valley, pouring in like honey, spilling over mountainous terrain, filling each far-off crevice with a warm embrace. The city was suddenly awash in colour and I had front row seats to an orchestrated dance between the more-than human of this space, the land, the forest, the many myriad bodies of water, the city and its waking human occupants, and the very essence which kept all this animated. I knew then, that this was where I wanted to be: in the space between lost and found, between fear and courage, stillness and adventure. This is the place of exploration and divine introspection.
Nepal ignited in me a love of exploring difference, an urge to strip away layers of fear, which would limit my capacity to experience life. I have since realized that there is so little we control in this world that to take control of our own lives is essential: our culture, our families and our survival depend on it. This ability to step into the unknown, not without fear, but rather, embracing the fear and adding just enough courage to keep moving until we have reached the stars, the light and the essence of our lives.
