My revelation at Wat Traimit

(This post is about social media addictions, and me pretending I’m a v self-aware person.  Don’t bother reading if that doesn’t interest you!) 

My amazing time in Bangkok can essentially be described as a cycle of run, work, train, eat, sleep, repeat, drink, then being hung, regrets, then run, over and over. I haven’t stopped since day one, so I haven’t really had time to think about what all this means to me.

But last night I came to realise I have this useful but bad habit, where if something is playing up on my mind I keep myself super busy and overload my week with activities. I’m starting to realise that in other words, I avoid confronting the issue head to head. It means that few months down the track when I’ve pulled the breaks, all these issues come back to haunt me.

So last night, I knew I wanted to go to a temple when the sun rose. Not one in particular, not to take some instaworthy selfies, not to pray to Buddha about winning the lottery – but I felt like I needed some time to reflect on everything.

So me being a rebel without a cause, and taking advantage of my boss being away for two days and leaving me with two assignments, I stayed up late finishing off work, so I could pretty much take most of the day off the next day. I felt bad, but my feet itched for it and I knew it was the right thing to do.

The security guards and the street vendors I usually walk past on the way to work gave me a puzzled look when I came out of my apartment looking like the biggest bum. Instead of being in normal work attire, I walked out of my apartment with no-make up and baggy sweatpants. Meh, we are so superficial these days, it felt kind of liberating. Why do I need the validation of others? I’m pretty dope anyway.

I ended up walking towards Wat Traimit, also known as the temple of the Golden Buddha. Like I said in my initial post, one of my goals in Thailand was to explore if Buddhism meant more to me than just being an inherent part of being Japanese. It was the first time for me where it wasn’t a family trip, wasn’t for touristy reasons, but purely out of the desire to reflect, that I carried my feet to a temple, walking almost 40 minutes into unknown territory.

Rather than making my way to the big guy straight away, when I arrived I settled in front of the smaller, more local Buddha where hardly any tourists had bothered to go to. A monk sat in front of the statue, uttering some words I couldn’t comprehend. Nonetheless it was really soothing, and blocked out all the outside noise. I won’t go into detail about my self-realisation or what I prayed for etc etc. But long story short, within 5 minutes, I took away the important life lesson that sometimes you really have to sit down and breath and chill the f**k out. Yes – without your phone, without snapchat, just me myself and I.

For those of you who don’t know much about Buddhism, Buddhism isn’t about believing in God, and Buddha didn’t claim to be this God-like figure. People simply worship him for his teachings, but don’t believe him to be a God. (Some strands of Buddhism do, but not the one I grew up with!) One of the teachings of Buddhism is that suffering is inevitable in life, and suffering comes from attachment. And yes, that’s very abstract and open to interpretation.

There’s been ups and downs, but there hasn’t been any extreme suffering in my life lately, nor any extreme cases of attachment. But I realised I often rely on friends, family and others to make me happy, that when they let me down, it gets me down more than it should. I let my interaction with others, and others’ actions affect my happiness more than it should, that I truly started to believe happiness was something I didn’t have control over. And jokingly but in all seriousness, I’m also so attached to my phone, that when I don’t have it, my immediate thought is “damn, I can’t snapchat this now.” I’m also a sufferer of low-battery-phobia, where the red battery sign scares me more than a punch to the face. THAT IS TERRIBLE! (at least I have the guts to admit I am basic bitch 101 repping the 21st century kid) I’ve also become so attached to my lifestyle here, so attached to people in my life, that if you took all that away – my friends, my family, my phone, my passion for Muay Thai, validation of others, and everything else, I suppose that would be pretty destructive. Cheers for the lesson, Buddha.

I then made a quick detour to go buy a good-luck charm that’s been blessed by a monk. I picked the happy Buddha – because I realised sometimes I have to remind myself to be happy and omg just smile you sad sod. If I have nothing to be sad about or happy about – why not be happy instead of sad!? #Word.

So I wandered through the temple, to the big Golden Buddha, then down to Chinatown, trying to detach myself and to unwind. It was super fun (because I was also being rebel AF and taking the world’s longest lunch break) having zero commitments, but also excruciating not being able to pick at all the amazing rice cakes and roasted chestnuts due to my upcoming Muay Thai fight.

I realised that at the end of the day, you have to create your own happiness – without the help of others, and without being glued to your damn phone. Chinatown was bustling – and had so much to offer. Taking a photo didn’t do justice to the place anyway – you had to be there and see for yourself the energy, hear the locals bartering, and smell all the delicious foods. I pulled out my phone only to take necessary photos for my blog, but still felt guilty. Going in an absolute tangent (but not really) I recently had the pleasure of getting to know a guy who ditched having a phone once he moved to Thailand. I noticed that he wasn’t snapping away his meal when we lunched together, and was completely liberated and seemed super content with himself. I felt like I was important, wasn’t boring him, and he didn’t need to be anywhere else. Which made me realise, I probably make people feel like they don’t matter when I whip my phone out at the table! I looked around us, and saw couples eating together but glued to their phones, mindlessly scrolling through what was probably Facebook.

Why do we look for so much validation through posts on social media, and compare our lives with others, only to get depressed that someone’s having a better time than you in Bali because omg their insta is amazing but it probably took them a 100 go’s to take that shot anyway!? Why do we crave the likes on Facebook and instagram, and measure our self-worth against it? I’m guilty of this too, and my snapstories are excessively long and I go on Facebook when I’m bored. My urge to pull out my phone while I was at the temple was a revelation for me. Just stop, enjoy being with yourself. And I did. And it was awesome.

So essentially this is the longest most boring post in my personal diary, with the takeaway message of CHILL OUT and don’t get tied up in knots over shit you can’t control. Stop being super obsessed with social media, and enjoy being with yourself. Don’t seek validation from others, or rely on others to make you happy – go make yourself happy by finding your passion, or going somewhere new. I went back to work feeling a wee bit more lifted and in high-spirits. And maybe one day I’ll be ballsy enough to quit social media, and be completely liberated and happy AF, just me myself and I.