A First Step

At the spa, the massage therapist handed me a small bowl, saying, “This is Hawaiian salt. What you’re to do with this is project all your stress, frustration, and worries into the bowl; the salt will absorb it. And the end of the day, we take all the salt from the day and take it back to the ocean in a ritual that’s meant to give the salt and what it’s absorbed back to the water.” Pause. “Do you need a bigger bowl?”

I resisted cracking a joke about ocean pollution and concentrated on the bowl, trying to drum up some stress, frustration, and worry into the bowl. And the most surprising thing happened: nothing came to mind.

Sure, I’d just traveled around the world and spent four days in a crappy hotel and talked nonstop to people about my job. I was exhausted, and being back in the States and in the new hotel’s spa was a way of treating my introverted, tired self. But even though I knew I’d soon be returning to the more mundane aspects of my job, even though I still had 5,000 miles to go before I saw my husband, and even though I sometimes feel that the travel part of my job is not worth the stress it creates, I blanked on what to put into the bowl. Because, after this trip, I realize that I am indeed very, very fortunate.

I have a loving and amazing husband who supports me in what I do, and I hope I do the same for him; I have a family that loves me dearly and, even if I get annoyed with some of the questions and challenges they pose, I go to sleep knowing that they’re there for me. My job’s not the most intellectual of all jobs, but it keeps food on the table, allows me to visit some amazing places, and it gives me time to either dawdle or work on the writing (or blog post) that comes to mind on any given day. I’m healthy, happy with myself, have a great education, am still learning many wonderful things, and the people around me are pretty damn neat-o.

So when I tried to project that stress, that frustration, and that worry into the bowl of salt, I just couldn’t. I’d just come from a place where poverty’s extreme, where children drop out of school at the elementary level, where men can’t wait for their government check to go drinking and women are beaten according to that check cycle. In the grand scheme of things, I am very, very lucky, and the only thing I could think to project into that bowl was the stress, frustrations, and worries of the land I’d just visited. I hoped upon hope that they took our advice, that they geared up for intense writing and competition, and I hoped that they would come out on top in the end. Financial, educational, environmental, and societal challenges are all theirs, and for me to project my own petty worries (do I have to work on that dumbass event? damn, I’ve been having a bit too much at breakfast! I am going to have a shitload of laundry to do when I get home) seemed inconsequential and a waste of the spa’s ritual.

You may think it cheesy, but rituals in this part of the world are taken quite seriously—as seriously as any Western religious ritual. I know it means something even if I am forking over quite a bit of money, but at least I have the opportunity to fork over that money selfishly; the least I could do (in addition to working my ass off for these people and being there when they need help and guiding them through the process towards better education and opportunity) is let their worries take precedence in small and big ways.

I could do more, and given the nature of this part of my job, I will do more. Hopefully the bowl of salt given back to the Pacific is the first small step of significant change for the country I just visited.