CHO

No time to think

No time to breathe

Just go

Just do

I am incredibly excited to be back in school.  Learning is amazing. Especially when you are learning about human beings, about culture, and behavior and everything that makes us US.  I don’t know what I will be doing tomorrow or next year or in ten years, but I know that it will be talking with, working with, teaching, learning from, crying with, and/or laughing with other humans.  Hopefully serving them.   One side of me loves living in Phnom Penh where I know lots of people, know the city very well, can do my schoolwork at any number of amazing coffee shops or even at the swimming pool at the Sport Club.  The other side of me, the part that sometimes gets drowned by my thinking that I have a right to devote time to learning, that I have a right to be comfortable, that I have a right to live, that side says what are you thinking?!  This world is overflowing with pain and hurt, with starvation, with AIDS.  How can I know what I know and continue being comfortable.  I’m done with me. 

If you have met Mr. Chomno of Cambodian Hope Organization, you know that there is no way to be human and say no to that smile. That face.  He has poured his entire life into service of every hurting man, woman, and child in this city and in this country. He is asking for help. Who am I to say no.  One side says no, you need to finish school so you can really understand people’s behaviors and really make a difference.  It says why not get a ‘real job’ and actually get paid for what you are doing?  I think some people might say that’s the ‘practical’ side.  I don’t get to be practical anymore. When I chose to see these things, to feel the pain, to fall in love with the smiles and the hope, I threw that ‘practical’ option right out the freaking window.

I am going to finish school, and going to love every minute of it.  But I don’t know how.  I don’t know when.  But I know that I cannot walk away from this.  So if I have no time to think or to breathe, but one more child gets to go to school, or one more family gets a latrine installed, or one more woman gets anti-virals, or one more baby gets to live another day it will be more than worth it for me.

Go. Do. Live. Love.