Fascination

Bhaktapur, Nepal

One dry season evening in the Nigerian bush, I turned the gentle corner of a single-track and startled at a large boa. The dirt road was about four meters wide, and the snake’s broad head was halfway across. The rest of the snake’s body still exited from the jungle to the right. In my Ford Bronco’s headlights, it glistened, bright and beautiful and terrifying. On its wide back, saddleback patterns in stark shades of brown-and-green-tinted hues formed an abstract camouflage. The snake would have been impossible to spot in the bush, but in the bare dust of the jungle track, it was a vivid, unsettling nightmare..

I marveled over its beauty. Though its colors were not bright, they were strong and dramatic and mesmerizing. The boa did not quicken its pace in the harsh headlights but continued its deliberate journey across the narrow bush road. I drove over it in my heavy truck and felt the vehicle rise and fall as each axle passed over the broad, muscular trunk. I reversed, backing over the snake, and as the headlights gleamed again off its mottled back, I saw its head enter the bush on the left. Its tail was still emerging from the thick jungle to the right. I marveled at its size.

I turned off the truck motor and listened as the boa disappeared into the dark jungle. Against the background of singing night insects, I could hear the distinct rustle of dry leaves and the sharp snap of small limbs as the massive snake continued its deliberate journey. I marveled at its power—and I feared. I listened until I could no longer hear it, and I wondered. I wondered why it fascinated me. I wondered why a terrifying beast could captivate me and paralyze me in the same moment. 

Like a moth flirting with a candle, something about danger entrances me. And when I find a terror, I dance around it, inching closer, darting back, knowing I’m alive.

Rubbish

Varanasi, India

I saw a body on the street in Port-au-Prince. I had gone into town early to avoid the crush, and the city was awakening to another sweltering tropical day. A corpse lay crumpled on the edge of a street corner, its position awkward and unnatural and disturbing. I knew at a glance, the grotesque filthy pile of limbs and rags would not stir to the breaking dawn. Someone did not make the voyage through the night. They had cast their garment to the curb and gone naked on some other journey to some undiscovered place. The grimy city moved along, unmoved. 

I moved along too, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to comprehend. Like the others in the busy market, I shuffled around the carcass, avoided staring, and thought someone should do something. I don't know if I was self-righteous or afraid or confused. I only remember that I judged the calloused disregard of my fellow dawn companions. I wondered how they could have no care for the broken, abandoned man, while I too picked a careful path around the offensive pile of decay. In my self-absorption, I could not see my hypocrisy.

Many years later, I sat on the ghats of the Ganges in the ancient city of Varanasi and watched a bloated corpse drift silently along the bank. As dawn broke, soft in the morning fog, ritual bathers made their pujas and vowed their sacrifices to their gods. They ignored the body that coasted in the flotsam nearby.

I watched unmoved and later felt ashamed, not ashamed that I did nothing but ashamed over my lack of emotion. I felt no stirring for that discarded, neglected person cast like rubbish into the Ganges. I wondered if a lifetime of wandering had anesthetized me to suffering and loss. I wondered if I had lost my sense of compassion. I wondered if perhaps I was overwhelmed, burned out.

I once thought, in arrogance, that I could change the world. I thought I could help people become better versions of themselves. But life has humbled me. I have found that some of my righteousness is self-constructed.

People are slow to change. I am slow to change. I struggle to change myself, and to change the world is more difficult than I imagined in my youth. I cannot change them all or help them all, but I can influence a few. I can help a few. I can make a difference to a few. And I can hope that I may find a noble ending.

What I Learned Watching Three Aussie Women in Kathmandu

Nepal - India Border

One of my favorite restaurants is Or2k, a bohemian Israeli place in Kathmandu, Nepal. They serve middle-eastern vegetarian and play Marley, and Dylan, and Cat Stevens. The walls are decorated with blacklight mushrooms and Kokopelli—a sort of eclectic, retro-hippie, groove—très chic. It’s usually full of stoners, and backpackers, and young singles making travel diary entries. You sit on the floor at low tables and lounge back against bright cotton cushions. The food is good and the people-watching, entertaining.

It was a raw sort of place in the early days, the kitchen a little dubious and the salad risky. Occasionally, someone might light up a spliff only to be told discretely, “You’ll need to take that downstairs, man.” Now it’s more refined, and the Pokhara Or2K in central Nepal is practically upscale.

I was camped with my laptop in the Kathmandu location one afternoon when four Australians settled into a spot across from me. While they ordered, they bantered about in that affable Aussie style, three girls and a guy. As they were waiting for their food, one of the girls covered her face with both hands and began to weep. 

She was magazine-cover gorgeous: rangy frame, raven hair, aquiline nose, olive skin, chocolate eyes. She wore no makeup. She didn’t need it. The slender fingers covering her face ended in perfectly manicured natural nails. Her weeping seemed odd, out-of-place. I avoided eye contact and focused on my laptop. It was awkward.

Women Have a High EQ

As the stunning girl wept, one of her companions leaned into her and put an arm around her shoulder. She didn’t talk or reason; she just held her. The third woman rose from her pad on the other side of the low table and nestled on the opposite shoulder, stroking the girl’s hair and dabbing her tears with a Kleenex. The guy sat awkwardly alone. Uneasy, he glanced about the room, fretting with his smartphone, trying to look preoccupied. The three women sat together for a good fifteen minutes, hardly saying a word—a classic EQ moment.

“Emotions guide everything we do.” Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence. 

There are two ways to measure a person’s potential, IQ and EQ. IQ, the intellectual quotient, is a standardized measure of raw processing power. EQ, the emotional quotient, is difficult to estimate, but it is a more critical life skill. We can be successful with a high IQ, but we are more real-world effective when we have strong emotional skills. But everybody knows that these days. What we don’t always understand is how to sharpen those EQ skills. How do we even get started? 

Women are generally more gifted than men with emotional intelligence. It comes natural to most of them. Men generally have to work at it. And it’s not an easy sort of work for us.

Emotions are like a cluster of instruments on a machine—like a fuel gauge, and a temperature gauge, and an RPM indicator. Gauges measure systems. Men understand mechanical gauges but tend to ignore emotional gauges. Women are different. They tend to read the emotional instruments and use the information to manage their lives and their relationships.

Like most men, I find the more empathetic emotions the easiest to ignore. I wept freely as a child and felt deeply for others, but I lost that sensitivity somewhere in the journey through puberty. Most men do that. Laughter comes easy to us and anger easier still, but grief, and compassion, and tenderheartedness are a struggle. We’re pretty good at protecting. We’re not so good at nurturing.

I always thought it was just the way we were. But a female friend once told me, “You should pay more attention to women. You could learn a lot from us. We can teach you how to become a better person. Try to really listen. Make a point to notice the color of our eyes when we are talking to you. Start noticing what we are wearing. Notice if our shoes match our blouse. If you can remember the little things, maybe you will pay attention to the things that matter. It’ll help you.”

She basically told me I was a misogynist. But she was so nice about it that I didn’t figure that out till much later.

Women Notice Details

I have five granddaughters. They’re all precocious little things: chatty, inquisitive, fashion-conscious, and very observant. I was shocked one day when the oldest one, scarcely five years old at the time, told me I’d worn “that same shirt” on my last visit. My last visit had been the month before. I couldn’t remember what shirt I had worn the day before, much less a month ago. When I take her into the city for ice cream or lunch, she never fails to recognize someone. I seldom recognize anyone in town.

In 2012, Israel Abramov, a Brooklyn College psychology professor, studied the difference between men and women and how they see color. He discovered that men require a longer wavelength than females to experience the same hue. Longer wavelengths are associated with warmer colors. So, when a couple watches the sunset together, the sun is more orange to the man while the sea is bluer to the woman. 

He also discovered that men were better at tracking fast-moving objects, while women were better at discriminating between color and detail. Professor Abramov figured it had something to do with testosterone’s effect on the development of neurons in the visual cortex. 

So, it’s not that we men don’t notice stuff. We just notice different stuff. And most of the stuff we notice is not very useful in today’s world. 

And yeah . . . baseball is harder to play than softball. But women softball players seem to enjoy the game a lot more than baseball players do.

Women Nurture

Those young Aussie women made frequent eye contact as they sat together. Their consoling glances said volumes as they scanned one another’s faces and measured one another’s body language. The guy looked like he wanted to disappear.

I could empathize with the brother. That level of nurture was cringeworthy for both of us. But are men just not wired for nurture? Not necessarily. This might be one of those cultural expectation things. Fact is, women are capable of leading if we will let them, and men are capable of nurturing if they are willing to develop the skill. It does take a little effort, though. Noting people’s eye color is a good place to start.

Women Empathize

As the troubled woman quieted, her two consoling friends began to weep, their tears discreet and sincere. It was a remarkable transition, as if her two companions were safety valves, releasing pent-up, toxic steam. Their lavish compassion made a public emotional train wreck look like a sailboat gliding on a gentle tide onto a sun-warmed beach.

In 2018, researcher Varun Warrior noted that women’s higher oxytocin levels could possibly make them more empathetic, while testosterone in men may have the opposite effect. He also observed that women do indeed score higher in EQ tests than men.

So yeah, it’s harder for us men to be nice, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be. We just have to work a little harder at it than women do.

Women Heal One Another

The food arrived and everyone settled. As they sampled one another’s dishes, the three young women moved seamlessly into a somber, face-searching conversation. The guy picked aimlessly at his falafel. 

About halfway through the meal, a precious little five-year-old British girl literally danced over to their table. As her father paid their bill and her mother watched from a distance, the little Shirley Temple announced herself in a cheery London accented greeting. 

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Catherine. Do you like my new dress?” She spun around, flashing dimples, and curly hair, and rosy charm, her skirt flowing around her in a crayon riot. Everyone in earshot smiled and paused their conversation and watched with warming hearts. The table lit up, and the melancholy girls hugged her, and laughed, and complimented her pretty dress.

I don’t know, but I suspect the child had watched the drama from across the room. And in her little female heart, she knew exactly what to do. 

Sometimes You’re Powerless

Khanpur, Pakistan

My first journey outside the protective womb of the Deep South was to a dozing cane field of a town in southeast Mexico, Cosamaloapan. I traveled overland in a wheezing International Scout with a Cuban. He was vague about his origin, but I knew enough to figure out that he didn't wash up on South Beach in some fragile inner-tube raft. He carried himself like one whose family once held land, in a sort of noble resignation…one of those pathos folk—good looking but cartoonish, prone-to-brooding, troubled.

We met some locals—rough, calloused ranch hands in starched jeans and pearl button cowboy shirts and crisp hats. We ended up sharing tacos in a grimy local cantina. The town sheriff slouched at the bar, harassing a plump young girl. He was a caricature lawman…open-shirt, hairy-chest, potbelly, drunk.

Half-way through the tacos, he staggered over to where we sat and slammed a weathered pistol down on our table. The gun spun a lazy circle and stopped, its cannon barrel staring into my sinking soul. His bourbon scent wafted over us. I avoided eye contact. The ranch hands shuffled, timid and embarrassed. He asked me if I wanted to buy a Mexican trinket. I stared meekly at my taco.

I understood, in that time-stricken moment, that I was powerless. I didn't stand and swap insults with him. I didn't move. I was a peasant, like the rest of the men around the table. I didn't seethe in anger or proudly resist my emasculation. I focused on my plate and hoped I would survive.

Time stands still in moments of powerlessness—that proverbial stare into the abyss. I discovered in that eternal moment that I was not arrogant or proud or brave or witty, but neither was I a coward. I was a survivor—nothing more, nothing less. I would do what it took to live another day.

I thought of my two-year-old son back home. I thought I would like to see him. I thought I would like to live.