Battling Bugs and a Vow of Non-Violence in Thailand

It's been a while since I 'lost it' like I did after school the other day, so instead of pretending like it never happened, being that there were no witnesses and all, I am deciding it best to confront my failure through this exposition.

There were a number of elements that contributed to the meltdown, and time was definitely one of them. But I'm not here to make excuses; I'm here to confess.

I am writing this from Bangkok, about a 6 hour bus ride from where I'm currently living in Sukhothai Province. I've had plans to come down here for the past week or so, to visit a friend, and had secured a ride part-way from a co-worker/friend who happens to go that same direction every weekend to spend time at his home with his family.

He is a patient man, and I doubt my tardiness in getting ready to leave was testing this patience, but when people go out of their way to do something nice for me, I feel compelled to make it as easy for them as possible.

So when he knocked on my door on Friday at about ten past 5, wondering if I was ready, I knew I needed to step it up into overdrive, as I hadn't finished eating yet and still needed to hop in the shower. I was prepared to skip the shower, given that he was standing there waiting, but he afforded me an extra ten minutes by admitting he had forgotten something at home, and returned to get it.

Perfect, I thought, just enough time to finish eating (I was almost done anyway) and rinse myself off before throwing a few things into a bag and boom, out the door to Bangkok. The plan would have worked fine, too, if it weren't for one tiny detail.

After showering, I threw on a new t-shirt, one that was nice and loose and would be comfortable for a long bus ride. As soon as the shirt was over my head, I felt a little prickly sensation, and then another. Hmm, I thought, maybe the fabric is a little rough since it hasn't been washed yet.

But after another moment or two, the sensations increased in quantity and in intensity. "What is happening?!" It became too much, and my arms started to flair about in a way that had anyone seen, they surely would have found it difficult to refrain from laughter.

I decided to take up the front of the shirt, to see just what the deal with this fabric was. Maybe it was some cheap polyester or something that was just scratchy in general. But upon revealing the inside of the shirt, and a slight focus of my hurried eyes, and what is that, "Oh my God this shirt is swarming with TINY TINY ants!!!"

I think it's safe to say that this is about when the meltdown proceeded to take place.

I ripped the shirt off as quickly as possible, but it was too late. My bare skin revealed my upper body to be covered with these little buggers, many whom of which had already bitten me.

If there was a choice as to what to do next, some sort of window of opportunity in which I could have taken a different path, I must have missed it. Any flailing that had begun when the shirt was on just increased by hundred-fold. Now, I was swiping and swatting every inch of myself I could get to, and using a different shirt to slap my back with.

I tried to catch them before it was too late, but there was just too many. I saw several escape down my boxers just as the phone rang. It was my friend, waiting at the front gate of my bungalow complex, wondering if now I was ready yet. He had a slight chuckle in his voice too, signifying that I should have had plenty of time to prepare after being given an extra ten minutes.

I suppose the fact that I took a vow of non-violence almost 2 years ago is what makes this a complete disaster on my end. I have been doing really well with it too, until now. Sure, there have been a few ants and mosquitos that have died by my hand, but not maliciously, and usually by complete accident. And some others that have drowned after finding their way into a dirty dish that was finally taken into the bathroom to be washed (I don't have a kitchen, or even a sink for that matter, so I wash my dishes by using a spigot in the bathroom).

Half of my above-average Thai bathroom, notice the spigot on the right, which is the closest thing I have to a sink.

But the difference is that I never intentionally had the desire to kill these tiny little creatures, not until the meltdown. That was really the point of taking the vow in the first place. It's not so much to save mosquitos and tiny ants from an untimely death, but more to purify my mind from the desire to harm another living being. As I found out, this desire to harm other living beings wasn't rinsed clear from my psyche, it had just been lying dormant, suppressed by the intention to do otherwise. A few years ago, this would have just been another insect killing rampage, but on this fateful day, it was the collapse of an entire way of life.

I didn't have a mirror in front of me, but I'm sure my face was bright red. I muttered something to the effect of "yeah yeah I'll be out in a second" and hung-up the phone before screaming every possible cuss word I could, nearly at the top of my lungs. The pain and unnerving sensations covering what was now my entire body was over-the-top unbearable.

As I took the opportunity to reflect on my current state, I was genuinely taken back by the whole thing, and felt about as low as I have for a long time now. I continued to jiggle, shake, swat, and swipe every square inch of myself, hoping to get these tiny ants off of me as I threw the last of my belongings in my bag, grabbed a new shirt, and ran out the door.

I was nearly to the point of cancelling the whole thing: I knew there were so many still on my body and more than anything I just wanted to hop in the shower and make sure they were off of me, but also because I was ashamed of how little I felt in that moment, how quickly I dropped my convictions and lost control.

So what is it about this story that I feel is worth sharing?

Now that I'm sitting here, feeling fairly recovered from the whole thing, I'm glad it happened, as I actually find it quite hilarious how ridiculous I must have looked and only regret that there was no hidden camera there to film it (or was there??).

If there is a lesson to be learned from my little, or should I say dozens and dozens, if not hunrdreds of tiny mishaps, I intend to learn it.

Obviously, I came face to face with "myself" in that moment, and learned more about my current situation than I have in a while. Afterall, I am a pretty calm and collected individual these days, and I haven't lost that calm, at least completely, in what seems to be a very long time. So what went wrong, and what ugly aspect of my current collection of conditions resulted in having this meltdown?

In my opinion, the lesson here has to do with expectations. Especially for us westerners, we seem to carry with us expectations that certain things are supposed to happen for us or that we shouldn't have to experience certain things.

No, I didn't have the expectation that my clean shirts shouldn't be covered with tiny ants, but I did have the expectation that when I applied a clean article of clothing, it wouldn't contain such bonus materials. Is there a difference? I think it's the difference between craving and aversion, which I talked about in my last post. If craving is wanting something, aversion is really just the flip side of that: not wanting something. In Buddhist meditation, we try to witness these elements occurring within us first-hand, but as I found out, you don't need to be sitting cross-legged to realize they are at work in our lives on a daily basis.

So no, I hadn't been walking around thinking that my shirts should be free of ants, but just the flip side of that, that my clean shirts would  be free of ants. On that fateful day, that expectation, that I didn't even realize I had, came to the main-stage of my life, and boy was it ugly.

Yes, I live in a tropical climate, yes there are a lot of bugs, and yes I find myself sweeping them out of my house almost everyday. Anything that is in contact with a flat surface is subject to infestation. The new shirt, which had been laid out on the bed that I don't use for anything other than a giant shelf (I sleep on a thin mat on the floor), was a prime target. And, given that they had recently been obsessed with a jar of q-tips and a box of package peanuts, I should have known that a new shirt might also get their attention.

So was it my fault that they got into my shirt? I dunno, maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that I was caught off guard, I was completely and utterly surprised to find they had found a new home in my new t-shirt. Looking back, it shouldn't have been such a surprise, after all, in this neck of the woods, these tiny little 6-legged insects are everywhere! 

Some of the aforementioned ants in action in an unrelated incident.

*Stay tuned for more on expectations in my next post...