Let’s Not Take Things For Granted

All you need is electricity and water (well maybe just water)

In today’s world we all seem so entitled. That things around us are just there for us to take and use.

Let’s not take things for granted.

Or maybe everyone should take a trip like this.

Mike’s Blog 192

There is that saying you don’t appreciate something or someone until it’s gone. That is really true. Arriving in Lumbini, Nepal – the airport was smaller than the house I grew up in. Literally a hallway for arrivals to walk through and into the parking lot.

No Grab taxi, no meter taxis – just a few entrepreneurs looking to sell you their private car service. Does seem there was a flat rate (about 15 USD) to get to the city center (if you can call it a city center – lets say the place most people live).

This was not a big deal really. And I am a sucker for an adventure.

But what gets you is the poverty you see on the drive from the airport. Naked toddlers bouncing on broken furniture on the side of the road next to a shack that is a shop selling chips and warm sodas.

What finally inspired this post was the first day at the hotel. We are in a very basic hotel – nothing fancy (Wendy is an adventure seeker like me, I’m so blessed!) – but it does have running water (cold showers make you stronger) and electricity (you need to request from the front desk for them to turn on the power generator to get the wifi on and charge up your phones). The water for showers and the sink comes from the ground – you need a mechanical pump to pull the water from the (well) ground? That will fill the water tower on the roof of the hotel.

So, after a day without phone (battery died and I didn’t realize I had to request to turn on the power – just thought it was broken) coming back to the hotel with power and running water is a blessing.

When the sun sets, the people surrounding our hotel (we are in the middle of a massive farm field) are in complete darkness. You can hear them talking and dancing and playing in pure darkness. As I walked from my room to get dinner upstairs in the hotel restaurant you can hear the people I the darkness looking at you – as you are a white man in a lit up hotel tower in the middle of the field. You are literally eating in an empty rooftop hotel restaurant being noticed by hundreds (not sure how many to be honest, you can’t see them) – but after a while they are back playing in their dance games and conversations.

During the day time, I can imagine where they sleep. You see old mattresses hidden behind the shopkeepers chairs. You see bed frames on the dirt next to their shack.

Total isolation from the rest of the world. No power, no water, no internet. I would see people take showers at the water pumps in their underwear and using a wet cloth to wash their bodies.

But really, what do we need to live? Many of us complain about such small things in life – the taste of their dinner, the quality of the TV show they are watching that night not being what they expected, to be honest I can’t even remember the complaints I used to have in my previous life, but I remember them being petty.

What do you need to live? To enjoy your life? What are your requirements?