By Jeff Petry (Magazine Issue 14) http://www.udonmap.com/magazine/download.html
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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. I realize that’s not a good thing to do in Thailand, as many Thais have often told me: “Kheet maak may dee”, or: “Thinking too much not good.” So I should probably just stop doing that, and all my problems would go away, and everything would be “sabai sabai”: “copacetic, hunky-dory”.
Being a typical farang, however, I can’t simply turn off, relax, and enjoy life as much as I perhaps should. In fact, I’ve even been contemplating something I never thought I would: going “home”; moving back; repatriating; or in a word: leaving Thailand.
Why on earth would I want to do such a thing, you might well ask – as even I might well ask. Things are cool here, life’s pretty easy, weather’s good, costs are low, and very, very high on the list for me: hassles are few and far between - at least major hassles. In short, overall I feel freer than I do in the U.S.A. (I can hear my compatriots whispering “treason” already.)
More freedom in Thailand than in America? Is this really the case? Or just an illusion? Does feeling freer actually equal more freedom? Or, like Kris Kristofferson wrote in “Me and Bobby McGee”, is it “just another word for nothing left to lose?”
Although I’ve met quite a few chaps here in the smiley land who certainly seem to have nothing left to lose, I think the lion’s share of this sense of freedom I feel has to do with being outside, somewhat apart from, the Thai host culture, as virtually all expats are, albeit to greater and lesser degrees.
In many ways, we are not subject to the same rules, patterns of behavior, manners, much less speech. Police frequently wave us through checkpoints, as if they can’t be bothered. Others smile gently - in that way only they can do - as if to say, “It’s alright. You’re a farang. We know you don’t know any better.”
Given all this, how can we not feel a certain sense of freedom? Dictionaries define freedom as: exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.; the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.
You tell me. Where do you feel less control, interference, regulation, coercion, or constraint in choice or action? In Thailand, or in your home country? I mean, really, this is a moot question. We all know that "Thai" means "free", after all, don't we?
But, I wonder, at what cost this "freedom"? Could the cost perhaps be a degree of cultural isolation? After all, although some of us do adapt to Thai culture quite well and relatively thoroughly, I personally have come to the conclusion that, in the end, there is something rather "unnatural" about us farangs living here. Or is it just me? (This better saved for another day (or issue).)
And finally, I must say I find it quite strange and curious that as I stay here longer, (after two decades now), I'm beginning to see more downsides to this faux freedom, a sense of freedom I loved so much twenty years ago. I'm beginning to think that maybe what I thought was freedom was in fact some combination of seeming lawlessness and blatant lack of enforcement of laws that in actuality do exist. And exist for a reason, largely.
For without them, what would we have? Utter chaos? Civil disobedience? Danger in our homes and on the roads? Or maybe this is just me... getting older; and wanting to keep my small family safe, happy, healthy - and out of harm's way.
