We all have another side

I look back at my last two entires and see that they offer conflicting pictures of life in Thailand, or that is what you could say at first glance.  I had thought about deleting my last entry as it arises out of my own questioning of where I am in life at the moment.  My sharing my questioning led to a comment from my friend for me to reflect on my life here.  So maybe the reflection is too subjective or too negative. 

Then I thought - No, don't change it.  These two entires give not two contradictory sides to life here but highlight that life here has two sides to it, and that is life everywhere. 

There is the beautiful, graceful, dignified side where everyone is very polite but there is also that other side where people can be nasty and get angry and show division.  That is reality.  I think back.  The day after the graceful community events for the King's Birthday I remember the bus conductor who yelled at me and chased me off her bus after I mistakenly and innocently got on her bus that was not in service.  Then there was the day before at work where the Thai manager thought she was talking like a good straight talking westerner but instead was being quite aggressive and confrontational in her ways.  I was sitting there cringing as I heard her talking to another staff member, thinking I would never talk like this at home. 

Maybe something is lost in the translation but these past two entries do speak of how I experience life in total here - sometimes good, sometimes not so good.  This only reflects our humanity as no matter who we are, no matter where we come from or what culture, we all know two sides to our reality - the strong and the weak side; the good and the bad side; the achieving and the failing side; and both sit side by side at every moment of our reality, whether we like it or not.