Dear Friend

Today’s Letter is a small celebration of ordinary people doing ordinary or extraordinary things.

Our media world relentlessly seeks to get our focus on them, on the government and all people in the public eye, and by extension, therefore, away from ourselves. And those in the public eye want us to listen to them, follow them, worship them, do what they say we should do.

They would have us all living vicariously, through their lives. It’s like a giant soap opera. And if we do as they demand of us, we sacrifice our own life. Now, it may be that even though we did have some wonderful experiences of our own, and even if we did learn some vital life lessons of our own, we find very few willing pairs of ears to listen to our tales and anecdotes and understandings. ‘It’s only the famous people that count, you are too small, too insignificant.’ We therefore rarely tell our stories.

Not me. Nobody is more or less important than me, or you; we all have our paths we are treading, and all are equally interesting and educational to me. I want to tell my stories, and I want to hear your stories.

So I’m much more interested in what I’m doing in my own life, and what all my fellow ordinary human beings are doing in their own lives. It’s why people speak to me, it’s why almost strangers are soon telling me their stories and dreams and fears and understandings, because I Iisten. And I observe - without judgment, because I’m seeking understanding of our world and our human way of being, and judgment chains us to the past.

As a consequence of my life of travel and teaching adults, I have met 1000s of ordinary people from dozens of countries (this feels like deja vu, me telling you this!), from all colours, creeds, classes, ethnicities, and of all ages, and our stories are FAR MORE INTERESTING! I love hearing their stories and tales and life experiences, and I consider this as anecdotal evidence of what the human condition, human behaviour and human potential is.

We are story tellers by our nature, and in today’s world and the new Information Age, it is OUR stories and thoughts which are being suppressed, censored, denigrated, scorned, because, they insist, we should be listening to the famous people, doing as they bid us to do.

Sometimes I find a history book that tells me about the lives of ordinary men and women and children back in past times, and I love these books - who cares about the lives of this or that king or dictator or gluttonous corrupt corpulent ruler, and this or that date.

I’ve got major books on American people and on the people living Arabic lands, and they make for riveting reading. The first is A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn (if you don’t know about his work, get knowing!), and the other is The Arabs: A History, by Eugene Rogan. In both books we read of past times through the eyes of ordinary human beings, often in their battles with those who seek to control them and their lives.

Yet, this is real human life in action, not the grandiose, self-obsorbed, ego-puffing activities of the famous, nor the ramblings, mutterings and exhortations by those in the public eye on what they are doing, and on what we should be doing in our life.

If we ordinary people in all countries of the world, and of all ages and backgrounds, want a better world than the one these vacuous sorts in roles of power and influence have brought us to, then we must celebrate our own lives, and the lives of those we come across and swap tales and understandings with.

Let me introduce you to a few totally unknown people - your fellow ordinary human beings in action in their lives. Enjoy.

Real people in the real world

On the worldwide spiritual group I’m a member of, we have weekly meetings online using Zoom. There are over 100,000 members all over the world, and it’s a life affirmative association for me, and I only meet interesting, caring people. I’m in the Thailand/Indonesia group. Usually there are about a dozen of us, and there are people from Germany, England, America, Scotland, Switzerland, Thailand, Australia, Greece, it’s a nice mix!

I’d like to tell you about our German friend who lives somewhere in Thailand.

He was once, back in his life in Germany, a very wealthy businessman who had all the material trappings of success. I can’t recall the exact story, but lots of money came his way, and he was very much the archetypal success story in western nations.

But one day, due to a series of circumstances, he lost the lot - all the money, the house, the business, the lifestyle, everything. He ended up in Thailand and now lives off his modest German pension stipend in a modest dwelling. He likes listening to the rest of us most of the time, but it’s always interesting to hear his tales and his spiritual wisdom that he’s acquired from the timeline of his life.

He often says that he has never been happier in his whole life than he is now. Telling.

One evening my wife and I went to the Rebellious Art Gallery in town for an evening of Indian chai, curry and music. I love that name! It was a memorable evening, and we ate Kerelan coconut-based curry off banana leaves, drank some wonderful tea, and listened to some skilled players of the sitar and other Indian instruments. There were many people there, and lots of chat before and after the music.

During the evening I got chatting with a German couple, who were on a very interesting journey indeed. They were on their way to New Zealand, having started out in Germany. Their mode of travel was their bicycles, and they said they were taking it all slowly, doing only about 50kms a day. Amazingly, between Germany and Thailand, they were both yet to get a puncture. They had some fabulous tales to tell, which just made me envious!

As I always hear from fellow travellers, the people they met in every country were all friendly and welcoming, including in the countries that the government and media of my home nation always tells us are ‘enemies’.

Ordinary people are NOT my enemy, thank you!

I told them about my own journey and that I was writing my big book about living spiritually and in harmony with nature. They told me the story of two German businessmen who were always in competition, constantly trying to outdo each other, looking to have the bigger house, the flashier car, the more expensive holidays, a bigger bank balance and all that jazz. The story ends in a graveyard where they were laid to rest next to each other after they had died. One of their tombstones was rather bigger than the other man’s, and on his tombstone it said, “I won”.

Any similarities in the messages from these three German people?!

Despite material ‘progress’ in Thailand and 1000s of 711 convenience stores all over the kingdom, there are still loads of traditional corner shops in the labyrinth of sois (small lanes and urban back streets) and living areas. We have one, just only half a kilometre from our house. This chap sells all kinds of things from eggs to bananas, curry mix packets to fresh vegetables, beer to cigarettes, sweets to snacks and so on. Sometimes it seems to me there’s nothing he doesn’t stock!

And always he is busy, one of the centre pieces of the local community.

Many years ago, not long after we had moved into our new house in a new housing project, there was a party given for all residents of this project. We were outdoors and Thais always know how to create a party and fun - plenty of great food, beers, soft drinks, music and from memory a good 30 people or more. I was sat next to the corner shop owner.

We chatted in Thai, and he was articulate, spoke at an appropriate, slower pace, using simpler Thai language to help me understand more easily, and we had a great chat. I realised he was clever, intelligent, kind, thoughtful. A thoroughly ordinary human being in the very best sense of the word.

He gets up about 4 o’clock every morning I think, goes into town to the huge central riverside market which is open from midnight onwards, gets the day’s worth of produce and other stuff for his shop and returns home, and I think he opens up shop about 6am. I sometimes go there to get some eggs if we have run out. Or my wife asks me to get something she has forgotten and needs for the dinner she is preparing.

He shuts about 8pm each night, and this of course means he’s open about 14 hours each day, seven days a week. Round about 5 or 6pm he starts drinking beers, and if you go by his place after 7 he is louder, more raucous, unsteady in gait and clearly drunk! But not in a bad way at all. I take this to be his release in life.

Profit margins are small, but many local people in the area shop there, and he and his wife saved up enough money to put their daughter into a good university in the next city. Occasionally the shop is shut for a couple of days or so.

I love ordinary human beings, and when you get to know them you find we all have our tales to tell, and our views on things, if only people are willing to lend us a pair of ears.

One time I was on the overnight train from Bangkok to Pedang Besar, a border town in the far south of Thailand, leading into Malaysia. The train would leave Bangkok at 3.30 in the afternoon, and get to Pedang Besar mid-morning the next day. I used to do this journey every three months for my first two years living in Thailand, and we called it the ‘visa run’. You would get off the train, get stamped out of Thailand in one building, and then walk along the platform to get stamped into Malaysia. I would then have a top chicken curry, having fun doing loads of people-watching, before getting back on a new train which then had an hour or so going through Malaysia to Butterworth, a port town, and then the ferry over to the island of Penang where I would be able to get my new three-month visa.

I loved these long train journeys, everything like that was a travel adventure for me in those early, heady days of living in Thailand.

Now, on this particular journey I had settled down in my seat on one side of the aisle, and was looking out of the window, watching the paddy fields pass by, with loads of coconut palm trees and sugar palms and other trees breaking things up. The sights and smells through my open window were mesmerising to me, made all the more seductive with the noise of train on tracks. Trains are my very favourite mode of travel, putting me into a reverie kind of world. I would always be in a sleeper carriage, and after dinner time the cabin attendant would come by bringing down the upper berth, and making the beds.

So anyway, I was enjoying the journey, and probably listening to some reggae on my Walkman, and just feeling super good and so connected to the moment and to the sights passing me by out of my window - as if I was actually those sights! At one point the young couple on the other side of the central aisle began talking to me in Thai. We chatted some, and being out and about on my travels was always a good chance for me to practise and improve my Thai.

Presently a few dishes of food arrived for them and filled the table between them. They insisted I join them for dinner, not allowing my efforts to not eat into their dinner! So the three of us ate these glorious Thai foods together, and yet again the friendliness and welcoming nature of Thai people shone brightly. It turned out that the chap was himself a cabin attendant for these long train journeys, but it was his holiday and he and his wife were traveling to their home town to spend time with family.

I felt very touched by their invitation to break bread with them… or, should I say, break rice with them!

I moved into my second apartment in Bangkok after three months living in the first one. This is early 1992. Now I had a five-minute walk to the school where I taught, instead of a bus journey in often gridlocked traffic. I did love my first apartment, in part because it was my first ever home outside of England! But it made perfect sense in a city renowned for its monster jams to be within walking distance of my work place.

This new apartment became my home for over two years, it was just a one-room apartment, but I loved it. I had one room, one key, one monthly bill, one ATM card, no TV, no fridge, no phone, just my stereo and a whole load of tape cassettes. Life was simple and highly enjoyable.

I recall resting there one time, listening to some music, and it suddenly hit me: I was ever ever bored any more! I loved the teaching, but in the day time without any classes I could go to a swimming pool to cool down from the Bangkok heat, eat delicious food, relax, read a book, and so on. I had good friends at the school, loved all my students (I taught adults), and they often took me and other teachers out for dinner after class. Above all I loved this new work of mine, teaching English to Thai workers or university students.

But the human being I want to tell you about in this tale was in the sois of where my apartment was situated. I would walk through these sois (lanes, side streets) and then onto the main road for a short time and then I was at our school. One morning I exited my apartment and as I joined the first soi I heard a gentle sort of singing or chanting sound. It sounded nice and melodious. As I was walking along it was clearer I was getting closer to the source of the sound. I was intrigued as to who was producing it.

I turned the corner and there he was, a blind man standing up against a wall, in the strong sun and blazing heat, gently chanting mantras or whatever. He had quite a hauntingly beautiful voice. Now, I might say here that in those first few months of living in Bangkok I saw quite a few beggars and so on, something I was not used to in my life in England (times have changed though!!). I didn’t earn a huge amount, and I reasoned to myself that if I gave money to all the beggars I saw I’d soon become one myself! And therefore I didn’t give money to any beggars.

However, this blind chap changed all that. I walked past him, feeling a surge of empathy for him, but not in a condescending way, just that he was standing and not sitting, and he was singing, and he was in the hot sun, not the shade. He was doing his best to earn money, not just beg for it.

However, I still didn’t give him any money, based on my previous reasoning. But as I walked past him I realised he was working hard for his money. Suddenly I found myself going back on my steps and putting some money on his mat. I just had this urge to help him with his life.

For quite a while I came across him in the same spot and always gave him some coins. I’m sure he recognised me and was always profusely thankful. It made me feel humble in my exciting adventurous travel-based life that I was leading. One day he was gone, and I felt a pang of disappointment - my local ‘beggar’ man was not there for me to give some money to, and to enjoy his joy at receiving it.

I reflected upon things later, and realised that nothing is black and white, and that I should judge all situations on their merits.

I arrived at Sydney Airport in Australia, circa 2002, did all the customs and immigration stuff, got out of the airport and into a taxi. Not too long later I was at my friends’ house and we had a great evening catching up on life. At one point I wanted to show them some photos (real ones, not digital) and that was when it dawned on me that I didn’t have my camera bag with me. I had only recently bought a new one with a zoom lens too. My camera is almost like a fifth limb for me - I’ve not been without a camera since I was 10.

My friend rang the main two phone numbers for the taxis, but it was futile, and nothing could be located.

The next morning they took me back to the airport for my domestic flight up to Cairns in Far North Queensland, where my sister and her family lived.

Later that day while was happily walking along the wonderful long white sand beach of Port Douglas, my sister took a call from our friends. When I got back from the walk it turned out that the taxi driver found my camera bag in his back seat the next morning, and he remembered where he had taken me to. He had then driven over to my friends’ house to return the bag!

A common feature of ordinary people is their innate honesty and desire to do the right thing.

Concluding thoughts

A last thought… many times I am speaking to somebody and they tell me of incredible stories - of adventure, heartbreak, terrible or great luck. I realise that most people live with some horror experiences that they have to carry with them through their life. There really is so much real suffering that comes to us human beings, but the amazing thing is that we get on with life, doing our best to find some fun, joy, peace and friendship.

It is my fellow ordinary man and woman that I want to help with my education ‘empire’ I am building up, because I know that the more skilled we become in learning, listening and communicating, the more knowledge and understanding we acquire, and the more confident we become in our own life. We become happier, healthier and live more harmoniously in all our relationships, and we become more creative, productive and proactive.

It starts to more and more become OUR world, ordinary human beings coming together to share in each other’s successes, commiserate in the sadnesses or horrors in our lives, and to give ourselves MUCH MORE CREDIT for our abilities, talents and our place in the world, and to therefore live with a sense of our own self-worth.

And less and less about the lives of those in the public eye who are trying to bend and shape our world this way or that way, which is never to the benefit of all us billions of ordinary human beings. We all have beating hearts, feelings, dreams, desires, hopes, and most if not all of us just want to be healthy and happy.

So, we help each other, realising all of us are fragile human beings trying to navigate a world pushed on us that does not suit our inner wellbeing, nor our physical health, nor our spiritual growth.

This, to me, is a huge part of the healing of humankind that we all need for the wellbeing of all of us.

What stories have you heard from ordinary people? What lives do people you know lead? What about the lives of those you see, but don’t know?

What stories do you have to share with others, but which you don’t usually talk about? How might you go about actually telling more people about episodes, adventures, sadnesses, happy times that are part of your own life?

Until next week, all the best.

Philip