getting real, - getting older - seeing through the game

Only caged dogs bark.... 

- Tengra Ngiam

I read this yesterday:

for easier reading -click on the picture to see it full size

It comes from the book  A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East
by Tiziano Terzani.  

As I get older there is a kind of liberation. 

Not the angry young man's liberation, 

But the liberation from self imposed restrictions and rules. 

Finally I see that so much of what I've bought into is not worth the effort. 

There are other ways. 

Most of it smoke and mirrors and  bluff, - bluff as in poker-bluff. 

Once you dare to call the bluff you laugh at yourself,

because the point was for me to find the courage to call the bluff. Break the hypnotic gaze of those imagined 'should's' and shouldn't 's. 

The challenges and the fears are all internal. Conquer those and the rest is half done. 

Why all this carry on ? 

Why all this smoke and mirrors when I was younger ?

I got upset. 

Then I realized: it was part of the game.

You are young, you are naive, you believe stuff they tell you.... 

And then you fight your way back to your own truth. 

It reminds me of those initiation rites: they drop you in the middel of the jungle with a compass and a knife and one other item of your choice. 

Can you find your way back ?

They drop you in childhood, with only the still quiet voice of your own heart and a jungle of distrations - to see how long it takes you to get back 'home'. :-) 

The dogs bark, but the Caravan moves on....
Old Arab proverb. 

I never met Tiziano, I only met him in his book. 

But I did meet the Surgeon Dr Naga  in Burma (Myanmar).

As punishment for his outpokeness Dr Naga was transferred to a hospital in the Naga hill, which was not used much.
         None of the local people went to hospitals, despite their need for medical help. This was in the 1960's

So Dr Naga walked  to the villages where the people lived.
He often dressed like them and walked all over Nagaland, operating on those who had real problems.

He performed surgery in the Nagaland hills using only a local anaesthetics.

           He operated on his patients while they were conscious and obtained useful feedback from them during the operation. He would ask his patients to sing or speak while he operated, both to help them and to assist his surgery.

           He walked from village to village performing many goiter operations, removing 'bumps and lumps'. This is his story starting 1965.

Dr Naga turned no one away for lack of money or payment.

He refused to take payment from those he helped. He simply did his job. He had enough to live and work and do his work.His story is here https://sites.google.com/site/ambulatorysurgerymyanmar

.........someone who found his way back home. 

Background 

• About Tiziano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiziano_Terzani
• About Dr Naga https://sites.google.com/site/ambulatorysurgerymyanmar/   and   https://www.createspace.com/3546913