It is good to have a retreat. Time away from the habits and well worn grooves that naturally accumulate when life runs smoothly enough. Time inhabiting an alternative slipstream, one that flows on a different elliptic of predictability and clears away the cobwebs of familiarity.
It’s like everyday is the first day of school.
In China the rules are different. Personal space shrinks to what in the west would be would be an assault. On first glance it is chaotic, and on second glance as well. So long as you surrender to the stochastic drift of feet and wheels, and move slow enough to feel the invisible currents that call the tune, there is safety. Putting on speed here will invariably slow you down, surrender is the key.
The rules are different, and like meditation on the breath is a constant process of remembering our way back to the present moment, so too does navigating life in China serve as a constant call to be acutely sensitive to the moment. It is not that life here is more interesting, it is that it requires more attention. And any time more attention is brought to the moment, life becomes more deeply textured and felt.
