Control, or lack thereof

I begin today with a confession, and in turn, an explanation of what you’re about to read. I realize that this blog, ‘til now, has given a misleading sketch of my life, filled as it is with actual stories of actual people, some of whom even engage in conversations with me. There might even be, in these stories, a glimmer of adventure — Mother Earth feeding memorable experiences from out of her very palm. And if you’ve gotten this impression, I attribute it to the fact that I haven’t yet blogged about the entirely un-glimmering things that consume 90-percent of my life, like taking special subway rides to buy cheese, and using the Internet to research Japanese haircut vocabulary, so I can finally beat my fear and go to a barber shop.

(A charming outcome, by the way. For reasons unknown, I never even put the barbershop vocab lesson to use. I just sat down in an empty chair, made a few snipping motions with my fingers, recited a quiet prayer and somehow ended up with a haircut identical to the one I've had, uninterrupted, for at least 8-1/2 years.)

For two months now I’ve been living in Asia, and I suppose there are two ways, both equally honest, to depict the experience. I could count for you the number of countries I’ve visited, the number of new foods I’ve tried, the number of improbable conversations I’ve had. (Such as: a Vietnamese man describing how two of his nine dogs were poisoned by a neighbor, so they could be sold to a restaurant for meat.) Or, I could count for you the number of times where, rather than hitting the streets to discover some great metropolis, I’ve found a nearby Starbucks, popped open my laptop and read preview articles about the Big Ten college football season.

There’s a push-pull, I think, when living someplace faraway. In many circumstances, you develop new routines, or even lose routines altogether. But in other circumstances, you fight for your old ones. To put it more simply: Lameness is a survival skill, or mine at least.

BUT — I do want to give myself a little credit. For far too long, I’ve cared way too much about control. In fact, the desire for control explains a large portion of my life. It explains the sports positions I most enjoyed as a kid (pitcher, goalie). It explains why I’m organized. It explains why I’m risk-averse. It explains why I’m a good driver. It explains why I look at nutritional labels. It probably explains why I like not only marathons, but also the training. It almost certainly explains my career choice, because I love nothing more than sitting down in front of a computer, reporting already completed, and somehow converting information into a story. (Or at least trying to. Either way, it’s a process in which the writer is entirely dependent on his/her own devices.)

Oh, but I’m already losing track of things here; let me explain why I started the previous paragraph with an allcaps BUT. I did that because, as I am now proud to announce, the control-crazed, centerfield-hating, passenger’s side-averse Chico has been purged from the universe, and this is by design. I took this job for a lot of good reasons, and I had plenty of time to think them all through. But a small part of it was the desire to change things a bit — to force a personality shift, because I felt like I needed it. So far, it’s working out just fine. Maybe even better than fine. It turns out, I can get the same ol’ haircut without even having a say in the matter.

Months before arriving in East Asia, I read a great book by one of my favorite writers/journalists, Peter Hessler. The book is called “River Town,” and Hessler wrote it while spending two years, during his mid-/late-20s, working as an English teacher in Fuling, China. I have to paraphrase, because I don’t have the book with me at the moment, but Hessler wrote something the lines of this: When you live in a foreign country, you have to let go a little bit. You give up control over your own life. And to an extent, you just have to trust others.

I was reminded of this yesterday, when I went on a harebrained journey through Seoul in search of flu medicine. My recent sickness, which developed about two days ago — chills, fever, etc. — is even more troubling because I was already sick. Indeed, I developed the first symptoms of a cold on June 24. (I remember the exact date for reasons not worth elaborating on here.) At the time, my colleague Blaine Harden was still around, and when I mentioned to him my developing cold, he recalled for me the experience he had at the beginning of his stint in Asia, when he caught a cold that lasted for four weeks.

This sounded improbable to me at the time — that is, until my cold symptoms lasted for five weeks. Then, just as my congestion was finally clearing up late last week, I flew from Tokyo to Seoul, and whatdaya know, I suddenly needed a whole new kind of medicine in a country where I don’t even know the word for medicine.

It’s all a bit difficult to take, because as a kid, I probably got sick a grand total of three times. Once, it was the chickenpox. Twice, I just wanted to hear some yodeling music coming from nine-double-oh-three-six. So yeah, perpetual sickness is a new thing for me. I suppose one’s immune system, like one’s personality, takes a little time to adapt.

Yesterday afternoon, before attending a press conference at the South Korean U.S. Embassy, I found a pharmacy. One man, maybe 50 years old, stood at the counter — a barricade separating customers from the stockpiled pharmaceuticals. I asked the man if he spoke English, and he provided a convincing argument, using silence, that he did not. I then pointed to my forehead, pretending to dab it. I gave him a mock shiver. He nodded, and pulled something from the shelf. He held two fingers, then three, and it occurred to me that he was informing me not about price, but about how many pills to take, and when.

So I nodded, and said thank you.

But then he shook his head, and held up one finger, then three. And then he double-checked the box, this time flashing three fingers twice, like a catcher calling for a forkball.

I paid and decided that I’d just pop two pills in my mouth, hoping for the best.

I felt better.