The precipice on a rainy night in Sri Lanka

A storm approached the shoreline of Sri Lanka.  It was a dark and broody wall of grey that stirred up the winds, knocking around our window shutters at the Galle Face Hotel - an old colonial gem, seemingly built when time began.  Waiters raced around the courtyard below, making hurried arrangements with stiff arms and shouting in an unknown tongue.  There was a party later that evening, and the Sinhalese workers slowly built some sort of cover from the rain over a chessboard dance floor, however impermanent. Beyond the courtyard, Boardwalkers scampered to get to their destination in double time.  It seemed that everyone was bracing for an event - the storm.  We were too zoomed out to really notice.  Looking at the world from a google map view can make a storm seem insignificant.  From our perch, we could only see the future.  We had a long way home.

The time was June of 2011, we had just been married, and in front of us was business school, our first house as a couple, a move from Texas to Indiana, and whatever else the future may bring.  We had to find home.

Looking back, that rainy night feels like the last night of a different age, an age where I learned how to feel the earth under my feet, an age where I learned to shift slowly with the globe, an age where I dusted off all the failures and stupidity that had accumulated around me and realized - Hey, I am still here, and now, I plan to do something about it.

On the tv show "Lost," there was always some sort of confusion or turbulence or event before anyone could reach the island.  As it is with a life separated by ages, between each age is a sort of turbulence, where you come out the other side in clear air as a different person.  It is frightening to move on, and some times we have to make difficult choices to get there.  While time is usually a pretty straight line, every now and again we have to jump off a cliff, uncertain of where we will land or who we will be when we get there. Having destroyed myself and rebuilt, I was finally ready to make the leap.  I suppose this is what brought this age to an end - I spent so much time tinkering, reading, building, exploring, writing rules, changing, and now, it was time to jump.

We would leave Sri Lanka and start heading home the next day.  Through Delhi, Kathmandu, Amsterdam, and even Cancun.  The future waited patiently for us.

 

And so it became, Ganesh became a guardian for this age.