As I was riding back on the bus from our student excursion late this afternoon, I was attempting to read the signs on the shops we passed by. It's not like reading signs in the U.S., as in Kyrgyzstan I am trying to decipher the Cyrillic alphabet.
It doesn't seem real, living in this land where the alphabet seems backward and my brain seems dyslexic.
One of the signs I could read clearly was the street sign of the main street of town, the street I live on: Lenin Street. Once, very early in my life, I lived on a street named after U.S. President Andrew Jackson, now I live on a street named after the founder of the Soviet Union. Our bus continued toward the campus, maneuvering a couple of times to miss a sheep or a wayward cow. Never have I lived in a place where livestock is the most common roadside hazard.
Staring at the Cyrillic alphabet, stories of super hurricanes on the other side of the the world, listening to Kyrgyz legends, Donald Trump, gazing at images of Lenin, drinking horse milk, watching Nazis march through America, my primary caregiver the gynecologist, living at -42 below: I sometimes feel as though I have lost track of what is real and what is unreal.
Sorting out what is real is always a challenge for those of us living far away from the familiar. Boise can be unsettling for someone from Manhattan, but the contrast I am experiencing between the opposite ends of the earth sometimes is as breathtaking as exercising at the high altitude where I live. My strategy for dealing with the effort to determine what feels real, is generally to ignore the entire question. "What is real is what is in front of me, with no thought required," seems the best road to travel when I'm feeling troubled by a hint of unreality. Yet every time I see an image of the flooding in Houston or hear the phrase "President Trump" or sit in my apartment watching Russian television, or look at where Kyrgyzstan is situated on the map of the world and realize that's where I am too, I wonder if reality is becoming slightly unhinged.
Perhaps that is why someone like Donald Trump can get elected. When people have trouble coping with what feels like daily intrusions of unreality disturbing and upending their mental picture of the world and how it should be, their feelings of discomfort cause them to take drastic steps, engage in rash actions. Perhaps that explains certain jarring behaviors I have witnessed on this side of the world too?
After much thought, I have realized that, though I sometimes feel that aspects of the world seem precariously unreal, that trying to sort out what is real is a hopeless endeavor. It is a duality that can only aggravate and perplex whomever tries to sort it. Maybe the effort to unravel this duality is impossible because there actually is no duality at all, in that everything we encounter is real, despite the temptation to label "unreal" that which is alien to our experience. The Cyrillic alphabet is no less real than the Roman alphabet--what is problematic is I was raised with one and not the other. It is our position in the world that shapes how we perceive what is real. If only all of us, Trump voters, myself, and each and every person, could simply realize that we have to reposition ourselves and our perspectives constantly to avoid this feeling of unreality. Easier said than done.
I feel better, more grounded in my personal reality, now that I have finished mulling over my feelings of unreality. I am off to participate in a celebration of the Independence Day of Tajikistan with my students. How unreal is such celebrating for someone born in the U.S.A. who was barely aware of Tajikistan's existence until two years ago? Yet how very real too, as these festivities carry many of the same meanings for the Tajiks I'm living among as they would for me on the 4th of July. Even more unreal is that I feel as closely connected to the Tajiks I know as I do to any of the Americans I know, yet that connection, though on the surface seems unreal, is certainly as real as anything I currently experience in my life. To embrace paradox, realize that perceptions of unreality/reality are all variations of the same experience, and to accept the unity of it all, what a difficult challenge it is. And facing that challenge with bravery, mindfulness, and a spirit of adaptability and resilience might be what distinguishes those who thrive in the world in a spirit of joy, as opposed to those who do not.
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