I have a bad habit when I get a new book to see how many pages it has. While reading, I calculate how much of the book I have read based on the total number of pages, wanting to know how accomplished I am or how close I am to the finish line. I want to stop counting and just read the book and enjoy and learn from what I am reading in the moment and not think about lengths and how close or far I am to the end. I want to enjoy where I am.

Two years ago, while traveling in East Asia, I felt incredible peaceful. (Not when the Cambodian border guards wanted to rip me off and make me pay extra for my visa or when the Cambodian travel agency didn’t have any working buses and made me ride in a pick up truck on a bumpy and dusty road for five hours without a bandana to cover my mouth.)

I would just think of something I would want and it would happen or the right people would come into my life at the right time. I felt like I didn’t need to make an effort for everything I wanted. I felt enveloped in love by the world.

When I returned from Frankfurt, Germany after the bookfair, I gave up the notion that I had to work hard on all fronts to realize my aspirations. I wanted the world to provide for me. This doesn’t mean that I was just going to sit and look at the sky all day or let my days pass by while admiring sunrises and sunsets, but that I was just going to let things be and happen to me as I desired.

Out of the blue, the wonderful opportunity to go to Doha, Qatar came up. While in Doha, I remember feeling the distinct sensation that I was back in Thailand, even though the weather and surroundings were nothing like Southeast Asia. Taking a break from the book fair, I sat on the curb outside of the fair, drinking my coffee, taking in the sun and listening to some Arabic music on my IPod. I felt like I was being hugged by the world. I went for short walk around the parking lot and returned to my booth, only to be greeted by a National Library official handing me a substantial check for my recent speech on a panel discussion about US-Arab cultural relations. I didn’t ask for the money. It came to me.

Though no Thai restaurant can replace the street food, warmth and feeling of being in a Thai temple or sitting on a white sand beach and eating super fresh pineapple, I don’t have to be eating green papaya salad in Bangkok to feel calm and cared for. If I let myself relax and let things come my way, they will.

Thailand or Qatar, calmness is in my head.

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