[Eventually I will write about what I’ve been DOING in Thailand, not just how I’ve been feeling. However, I have been feeling a lot here and that is what I have been inspired to write about. Adventures have been happening and will be told. Don’t you worry]

            5:02am comes early. As 5:55am rolls around I finish my coffee, say goodbye to conversations I would like to continue and I put on my running shoes. Heading to the park it’s still dark but I can see the lights ahead. I focus on getting to the waterfall of light the street lamps create. While I’m in the light I can see nothing else, just the small space the street lamp floods, a 10 foot circumference around me, which I pass through in a second, back into the darkness where I can’t even see my feet, just the circles of light ahead and a memory of them behind.

            While I’m running I think about where I am. I think about my attempts at being present. I think about how being in Thailand has forced me into really focusing on where I am and who I am and how I want to learn and grow: mentally, physically, and spiritually.  Each time I step under a light I imagine that there is nothing beyond it and nothing behind it. I am in the light and I am nowhere else.

            Even though I know that I just passed a Buddhist temple that was build 1000 years ago (that blows my mind just to type it) and ahead of me are more wats (temples) that are just as old, there is also a dog that is waiting to bark at me and a truck of a fellow runner parked by the gate—but I am in the light and no where else. Focusing on that 10 foot circumference, focusing on Thailand while I am in Thailand, is hard. Noticing the light, enjoying being able to see clearly in the light is something I am practicing daily. Failing at it some days, but also succeeding at it in other moments.

            I will keep getting up early, I will keep running, I will keep moving in the light.