“Now let us take our ease here for a little!” said Aragorn. “We will sit on the edge of ruin and talk, as Gandalf says, while he is busy elsewhere. I feel a weariness such as I have seldom felt before.” He wrapped his grey cloak about him, hiding his mail-shirt, and stretched out his long legs. Then he lay back and sent from his lips a thin stream of smoke.
“Look!” said Pippin. “Strider the Ranger has come back!”
“He has never been away,” said Aragorn. “I am Strider and Dúnadan too, and I belong both to Gondor and the North.”
–The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, “Flotsam and Jetsam”

Is real life actually happening all the time? And can you be the same person through all of it?

I wondered these things, weaving in and out of the noise and lights of a Bengaluru night, sitting very close in a tuk-tuk with people I met just days earlier. We were various levels of buzzed and tipsy, having drank and ate and danced at a Shakespeare-themed brew pub for several hours before heading back to the fancy hotel where we’d get some sleep before enjoying our one real day off on a hectic work trip.

One of my new friends held a phone out the side of the carriage and snapped a selfie.

“Hey, you guys,” said another new friend, one of the Indian members of our cohort, “I am having a FOMO.”

He turned from his perch on the small front seat next to the driver. “Because I want in on this selfie too!” He whipped out his own phone and snapped a selfie of all four of us, our smiles much wider than the spaces our driver slid through between buses and Suzukis and Pulsars.

Bengaluru was about the midway point of my time in India doing recruitment and network-building as part of my job in university admissions: 3 weeks, 7 cities, 30 schools, 4,000 students. A blur of hotels, phenomenal food, introductions, goodbyes, insane traffic, and so, so many people. So much newness and so much learning.

From the time I said “sure, yeah, I’ll go” back in September, the trip was a pretty major source of, or at least nexus for, my anxieties, and I thought of it as being three weeks where I would basically put my life on hold. Of course, as usual, and thank God, the anticipation ended up being the worst part, and it was a great trip. But still I asked myself as I flitted from school to school and city to city if it was all real life and if the person living it was really…well, me.

It’s important to note: while my characteristic use of big words and references to this and that might make it seem like I’m being didactic, this is really me humbly grappling with my own messed up way of processing human thought and emotions. I’m not pretending I’m onto something new, and I don’t know if I have any wisdom to impart. But at the very least, writing this will help me sort out my own soul, and maybe in doing so something, even one thing, will resonate with you. And on a very practical level I’ll get to tell you more about my trip and also foist my artistic sensibilities on you hehe.

So what do I do in “real life”? Well, I work a job in admissions where I process applications and evaluate transcripts and send a lot of emails. I do this job so I can provide myself and my best friend who is a cat with food and shelter and a couple streaming services. I work out just about every day. I hang out with my friends, being extra with costume parties and themed dinners and big chilling with video games and movies and…mood enhancers. I’m in the revision stage of my next novel (coming this year) and have actually started writing a sequel to [redacted] coming maybe 2026? I go to church less than I should and small group as much as I can. I play DND. Oh yeah and I invest in things that cause me pain like Everton Football Club, Christianity, the DNC, and dating apps.

That’s me. That’s what I “do,” that’s my life. And for the first time, I could see myself doing more or less the same things five and ten years down the line (of course it won’t go that way but we’re pretending it will).

You can see why three weeks on the other side of the world with absolutely no one I know doing things I’ve never done before would feel removed from my “real” life. This dissociation was compounded by two things: while most/all of the other counselors make trips like this regularly and work mostly/exclusively with international students (or were Indian themselves), international admissions is only part of my job and international travel is a small and new part of my role; and my experience of India was such a limited, privileged exploration of the country.

The first point: This is not what I do for work. It’s very possible it will become a bigger, more regular part of my job, but for now it felt more like an international admissions ride-along. Everyone else on the tour had so much more international experience than me, and they all know they will have more experiences like this in the future. Many of them have cultivated world traveling as part of their identity, and while I have been to three different countries in the last 9 months, and intend to do more world traveling, I haven’t yet gotten to the point where I have made this a part of me.

The second: Yes, I experienced and learned so much. I went so many places, met so many people, tried so many foods…but I also stayed in four and five star hotels, had professional drivers and valets, stayed mostly in metropolitan areas, and visited top schools. I experienced India, but only a small and convenient piece of it. Very few people ever get to do what I did, and I myself might only get to do something similar a few more times in my life – if at all.

So I wondered, as I flew literally and figuratively around Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, and Hyderabad, if this was my actual life or a just a very long, very stimulating side quest, a spinoff just barely related to the original.

And, I wondered, is this really me doing all this? When I finally made it home through an absurdist odyssey with a shambolic airline, did I leave some piece of me there in South Asia? Did the intimacies I shared or the impressions I made with new friends and acquaintances count if I never see those people again? If all I said and did over there only comes out here in response to “How was India?”, is that the box it forever sits in?

Obviously this is real life and you’re the one living it, you might say – and so might I. But, for me at least, knowing this is different from really believing this. About a year and a half ago I wrote about something similar in the wake of my grandfather’s death, and I expect a year and half hence I’ll write about this again. India was the latest opportunity for me to explore these ideas and hopefully come closer to mastering them.

As you may know already or could have guessed reading my description of my life, I don’t see myself as a serious man who commands respect. It’s my personality, too. I don’t really know how to receive compliments and I downplay my accomplishments (you will NEVER find “M.A.” in my email signature). I constantly have to correct people that I’m a self-published author and that is not such a special accomplishment.

So it was wild in India to suddenly be seen as a valued guest, a distinguished gentleman, a powerful associate. The service industry in India runs mandalas around that in America, and you can’t take a step in a hotel – especially the more luxurious ones – without someone begging to carry your bag or open your door or get you a masala chai (praise be). This is disorienting for someone who can barely afford to stay in any hotel, let alone a Marriott or ITC. “Oh no, you have mistaken me for the CEO wunderkind of some tech startup. I’m just here because my boss asked me to be.”

Similarly, the schools we visited were all so welcoming and hospitable, giving us food and more (awesome) tea and (passable) coffee, often giving us gifts. Before I presented at a school in Vizag, when I was on the solo leg of my trip, I was introduced by a student who read my accomplishments (lol) and even read my quippy bio on my LinkedIn as if it was a line from the Mahatma. I was flustered. “No, see, I’m just here to tell you about my university and will be presenting approximately none of my own original insights.”

Everyone at the agency I toured with continued to treat me with such respect and generosity. I sat with the man himself on a Radisson balcony overlooking the Bay of Bengal late in the evening, drinking whisky and eating prawns, and had an out of body experience like “what is going on this is some Don Draper shit am I an actual grown man oh no I have no wish to be a grown man.”

I am also, it should not surprise you, exceedingly deferential and polite. Unfortunately, you cannot physically move through the nation of India without being assertive and at times exhibiting behavior that in America would get you called a nasty name. Indian people aren’t jerks; it’s just a necessity in a country of billions of people where everyone is go-go-go that you might have to tell someone to get out of your way.

One way to look at these moments of strained identity is as growth opportunities. And that’s true! Maybe if people treat you well you should tell yourself you deserve it. Maybe you have the right to be a little more assertive and advance your interests, even in something so trivial as getting boarded on an airplane or crossing the street.

But there is also the possibility in situations like this of fracturing our identity, of becoming too externally responsive and motivated. Seeing yourself as others see you can cloud your own understanding of yourself, and make you believe you are either much “better” or much worse than you really are. BIPOC Americans have been contending with this for hundreds of years (see DuBois on double consciousness, for starters), and my rather benign experiences of it make that much more evident to me the effects of this discursive violence.

Situations like this, if not well-managed, can also lead to undue code switching. We all code switch, and thank goodness, but constant and extreme code switching is exhausting at best and self-destructive at worst, especially if the codes we adhere to are in direct opposition to our inner being. Again, this is an everyday challenge for minority populations that people like me are often blind to.

There are plenty of times outside of India that I feel these tensions, but the trip was an intense, compressed experience of it. If what happens in India stays in India, then I could just write it off and move on. But as we’ve established, those weeks in India are my real life, and I am the one who lived it. So what does someone like me need to bear in mind when presented with these situations – how can I learn and grow from these situations, so that in the future – whether in a fever dream of newness or in the mundanity of daily life – I can not just keep my head above water but cut through the swells?

I’d point to a few different sources for guidance and inspiration. I’ll start with Takuan Sōhō’s The Unfettered Mind. Sōhō was a Japanese Zen Buddhist philosopher, living and writing in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The Unfettered Mind is his treatise applying Zen Buddhism to martial arts. One of the key teachings – and the one that has been most helpful to me in dealing with anxiety and OCD – is to flow through the places where the mind stops, what Sōhō calls the “abiding place.” It “signifies stopping, and stopping means the mind is being detained by some matter, which may be any matter at all.” When in combat (most often he is using the way of the sword for his examples), it is essential to act freely and unencumbered by thoughts, reacting and acting in fluid motions. Constant stopping for thought is a good way to be killed. So too in our minds; constantly stopping to think about everything can be our undoing (trust me).

The idea of this flow state can be found in many philosophies. It reminds me of my rudimentary understanding of chakras. If our chakras – pools of energy – are blocked up with the gunk of life – fear, self-doubt, guilt, grief, etc. – our energy cannot flow, and we become spiritually constipated.

That said, those pools are in need of some examination, which is only possible when the water is clean and calm. Consider my favorite of the Proverbs in the Bible, 20.5: “The purpose of a man’s heart is like pools of deep water, but the man of understanding will draw it out.”

These illustrations from Buddhism, Hinduism/Buddhism, and Judaism/Christianity suggest that we must let our energy, our thoughts, our lives flow, and that when these things flow we become better equipped to do the necessary work of deep self-examination and contemplation. We cannot step into every new setting and be consumed with thoughts of “how am I to act?” and “what are people thinking of me?” and “what does this mean for my life?”

Instead of scrutinizing every single situation, we can let our fluid way of being guide us, just as a samurai must react fluidly to their opponent’s strike instead of stopping in the abiding place. As a Christian, this calls to mind passages like Micah 6.8: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” We walk figuratively every day, and there is a posture to take when doing so that will prepare us for whatever might come.

But what about when we extrapolate this to a bigger picture of life? Is walking well as simple as one well-measured step after the other on and on until we die? Depending on how you use that metaphor, sure, maybe it is. But I also think sometimes we need to look up and take stock of where we are. At the risk of too many metaphors, in life’s storms we need to have firm anchors of the soul and maintain a steady course, but I think we also need to be able to see those storms as key moments in our lives that invite us to reconsider some things and possibly make some tough choices and – as a result – changes.

One of the most damaging decisions I’ve made in my life was to hold out hope for a certain relationship to develop over the course of many years (and that is as specific as I will ever be about that). But I don’t believe what I did in the macro was wrong. The mistake I made was letting that dream cloud my perception of so many other things, ranging from my own self-worth to my investment in the actual relationships I had. I do not think I was wrong to sacrifice parts of myself and my life for this thing, but I know the way I did it was – ultimately – destructive for me and for others.

There’s a larger discussion to be had about codependency, but this is not the time. Simply put, I believe with all my heart that we are built with the ability – the gift – to sacrifice ourselves, to give ourselves to causes, to dreams, and, yes, to people.

Maybe it’s silly, but at times in the situation I’m referring to, I thought of myself as Aragorn who spent decades of his life facing many (often lonely) trials in the hopes one day he and Arwen would have Elrond’s blessing to wed. But, even though Aragorn is also an INFJ, I was not being like Aragorn, who at all times and in all places was the same man, applying himself in the same way to the task at hand, and those tasks were various and sundry to say the least! Yes, he did have in mind through it all that one day he would press his claim to the throne of Gondor and marry Arwen, but that didn’t cloud his understanding of who he was wherever in Middle-Earth his errantry took him.

Despite my poor imitation of Aragorn, I can see other examples in Tolkien of characters exhibiting this ability to commit to an overarching goal while remaining present and in a flow state day by day, so much so that it’s worth noting as one of the many themes the legendarium explores. Consider Olórin, whose overall purpose incarnated as Gandalf is to defeat Sauron (only the biggest bad left in Middle-Earth), but yet he still takes the time to learn all he can about the seemingly inconsequential hobbits. He has a different name everywhere he goes, and each people group has their idea of who he is and what he’s supposed to do, but no matter how he might adjust his behavior he stays true to who he is and his purpose (the only of the Istari to do so).

One more text to examine: I’ve seen the one season of Blue Eye Samurai four times now, and I will probably watch it another handful of times before the second season comes out (hopefully that’s not too long!). It’s one of my most favorite things I’ve ever watched, and I spend a lot of time thinking about it, always finding something new to ponder. I’ve also tried to figure out why it is that the show connects so personally with me. Yes, I love it because it is beautiful and really really kicks ass, but I also connect with it on a level that makes it not just entertaining but meaningful.

Mizu is, from beginning to end, focused on her mission: find and destroy the four wicked white men she has sworn to kill, taking vengeance on them for the act that brought Mizu into the world as a monster in the eyes of the Japanese with “pure” blood. She learns along the way that she has become too consumed with the fire of revenge to be effective in her quest. But the problem is not that she has committed her life to the sword and to revenge, it’s that in doing so she has closed herself off to anything but the pure fire of hate and violence, the onryo, the demon. In her conversation with her adoptive father, the swordsmith Eiji (possibly the best scene of the season), Eiji does not tell her that her chosen craft (violence) and mission (revenge) are wrong. Instead, he tells her the way she is pursuing them is wrong. She is not pursuing them like an artist, which is what he taught her to be. “An artist gives all they have to their art – the whole. Your strengths and deficiencies, your loves and your shame. Perhaps the people you collected. Maybe there is a demon in you, but there is also more. If you do not invite the whole, the demon takes two chairs, and your art will suffer” (ugh i love this scene and this show so much).

Though he objects initially to Mizu’s quest, by this point he no longer condemns it, and is even ready to help her forge a new sword. Mizu’s big picture decision to dedicate her life to this seemingly impossible task is her decision to make, and neither Eiji nor Ringo will condemn her for it despite what it demands of her. Her error was in allowing the demon to consume her art. She and her new sword will be reborn in fire, a mix of pure and impure steel as all the best blades are. Her life won’t be all about the end goal of vengeance; it will also be about the people and places that quest takes her to along the way.

Living mindfully while also able to make the complicated, introspective choices is really hard, even with examples both real and fictional, practical and philosophical to learn from. It is an exercise in many spiritual disciplines, one of the most elusive being constancy. It’s here again I turn to Christianity (though examples of constancy can be found elsewhere shoutout Taoism). A central belief is that God is eternal and constant in all three persons of the Trinity. Different Christians will interpret this differently and find their own ways to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies and mysteries regarding the character of God. But the point is that we almost all agree that – in stark contrast to the Greek/Roman gods and many other belief systems – the Christian God is not temperamental and inconsistent. God is who God says God is. God does what God says God will do. What a rock that is to stand on. As we’re battered about by the waves, as we struggle to be who we say or think we are or do what we say we’ll do, there is a God who is constant through everything.

Of course, the character and nature of God can be a little abstract, a little out there. So let me return to India for one final concrete example.

My favorite cultural experience of the trip was a visit to a Sikh temple in Bengaluru. One of our valets was a Sikh, and on the bus ride there he told us about his religion, about which I knew very little. It’s a fascinating religion with a fascinating history, but the main point according to our valet was that Sikhs live to help other people and serve their community – that is their primary act of worship. Our valet has made a career out of helping people, keeping them safe and comfortable as they travel in India and other countries, working tirelessly to keep everyone’s ducks in a row.

One of the ways Sikh community service plays is out is in the physical spaces of the temples. Sikh temples provide shelter, food, and comfort for anyone who comes through their doors.

There were a few rules about the temple: head coverings must be worn; shoes must be removed; no photography inside. All three gave the space a feeling of sacredness, though I wish I could have more pictures to share of the beautiful white building and the understated elegance of the shrine.

After a brief stop in the shrine (think church sanctuary), where we sat with a few dozen Sikhs in prayer and meditation in the presence of their holy text and traditional music, we went to the serving hall, where an entirely volunteer team prepared and served a large delicious meal to scores of visitors (I did not partake. It would have been rude not to clean the plate, and given my GI sensitivity I didn’t want to literally bite off more than I could chew).

It was so moving to be in a sacred space where people pursued not just their own spiritual betterment but the material, physical wellbeing of their neighbors. It was convicting for me as a Christian, because I wish more – no, all – Christian churches were like that. And it put into a whole new horrifying perspective the atrocity committed at the temple in Oak Creek (a 20 minute drive south of Milwaukee) in 2012. I hope to visit there soon.

Sikhs are a minority wherever they go – just 1% of the population of India, where they are most concentrated. They take all kinds of different jobs living all different kinds of places. But they carry with them everywhere the mission to help their neighbor and serve the community. Hundreds of years ago, that meant going to war with the invading Mughals.

Today, it might mean helping a nervous American get his luggage from one city to the next as he has an existential crisis of sorts thousands of miles from home.

Forth now, and fear no darkness.

Soli Deo Gloria

-Peter