25. Chapter 20: Change is the Only Constant

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Transcript

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Chapter 20 Change is the only constant. Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, said that change is the only constant in life. I have always struggled with change, and the ending of my relationship with Dave was no different. It was clear that he wasn't used to dating a woman who challenged him at every moment, and he wasn't as invested in this relationship as I was. Whereas I considered him a lifeline in Kuwait, it was evident that Dave viewed me as just another girl he'd met at a party. As he faded out of my life, his project also ended, and he ended up leaving Kuwait shortly afterwards. When he ended our relationship, I was devastated. It was as if I'd just lost the love of my life. Since my time in Kuwait, I have learned a lot about emotions.

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Dr.

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Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist I often reference when teaching meditation and mindfulness, teaches that an emotion takes only 90 seconds to rise and fall. If our emotional experience is extending longer than 90 seconds, then what is elongating it is our vritti, our thought patterns that worsen the experience. One of the vritti is Vikalpa or imagination. When I imagined that this relationship with Dave was crucial to my happiness and that I couldn't let it go, this was the elongated cause of my suffering, not the relationship ending itself. Now, when I look back on our relationship, I can step outside the narratives and see the relationship for what it was, leading more to my suffering than anything. I realized on a Recovery 2.0 retreat with Tommy Rosen in 2024 that my addiction to seeking happiness in the outside world was a manifestation of codependency. According to Tommy, codependency is the root of all addiction. He said during our retreat that all addiction comes from the same thing. It's an identity crisis. We look to the outside world instead of looking within. Through developing a deep spiritual practice nowadays, I truly don't feel the desire or need to constantly be in a relationship. If a relationship doesn't bring me joy or add to my life, then I'm wasting my and the other person's time. But back then, I could not let it or him go. Nevertheless, there was one thing that was able to lift me out of the funk that I was falling into, at least momentarily. My work visa finally came through at the start of November. I had my passport back. I could finally leave the country. I got on a plane the first weekend that I could and left Kuwait for the first time since August. I decided to take that trip to Dubai that I'd planned over a month earlier. As the plane began its ascent into the air, the flight attendant came around with a drinks cart, and I ordered my first beer in four months. I barely had time to drink it before the plane was going down again. It was landing around 90 minutes later in Dubai. After months of seeing only strangers, being greeted by Claire's big smile and familiar face at the arrivals gate, so far away from home, was so comforting to me. As we drove along, talking and laughing nonstop, I noticed that in Dubai, the roads were fast moving, safe, and clean. There was a system to them. We drove through the city, which was spotless, like the set of a movie, and I saw the Burj Khalifa for the first time, a building I'd only heard about and seen pictures of on the internet. I never thought that I'd see the Burj Khalifa in this lifetime. She took me to her apartment to drop off my things before taking me out to the nightclubs. We had another friend from university, Louise, who'd also come to the Middle East at the same time. She lived in the same building as Claire and they both worked at the same school. She came upstairs to Claire's apartment when I arrived and greeted me with a smile and a hug. Finally, it felt like home again. They gave me a tour of their apartments. I was immediately envious. Although Claire and Louise also had culture shock as a result of moving from North America to the Middle East, as well as having to acclimate to teaching for the first time in schools that were vastly different from the schools that they had attended in Canada, it was clear that their school was investing in the well-being of their teachers in a way that my school was not. Instead of offering furnished apartments like my school did, their school provided its teachers with a sum of money that was to be used as a furniture allowance. Giving their teachers a set amount of money for home decor made a tremendous difference, as their apartments felt a lot more like home. Instead of the broken bits and bobs and rundown furnishings that I had at my apartment, they had nice IKEA couches and beds that they had chosen themselves. While their apartment building was also far away from the city center, it wasn't in a neighborhood like Mabula. And they hadn't had the same security issues that I'd had. Their school didn't give all of the apartment keys to the maintenance staff the way that my school did. Their school's housing had a rooftop pool, which was clean and maintained, unlike the one in my building. When floating in the pool, we could see the Burj Khalifa, and their apartment had working gym facilities. But what I was most jealous of was that they could go to a bar and order a beer. We went to brunch, the brunches that I'd heard so much about, and I couldn't get over the fact that we were still in the same region. Dubai was a one-hour flight away from Kuwait, but it was worlds apart. Brunches were a haven for an expat like me. We started drinking beer at noon and were up on our feet singing Sweet Caroline with our arms around other expats' backs by three in the afternoon. Whenever we got drunk, Claire and I would laugh and say, thank you, Nick, for bringing us together. Why did I choose one of the few countries in the Middle East where alcohol was completely banned when I could have chosen somewhere to live like Dubai? Ironically, now that I'm completely sober, I don't even think about access to alcohol at all. If I moved to Kuwait now, I am sure I'd have a very different experience than I did in 2015. This weekend trip to Dubai was the start of a troubling mentality around alcohol for me. Living in a country where I couldn't have it meant that I would binge to excess as soon as I landed in a country where it was allowed. I developed destination addiction, an obsession with the idea that I would find happiness wherever I next traveled, as alcohol would be legal there. Once I arrived, I drink from the moment the plane landed until the moment I got on the plane at the end of the holiday. Each time a plane headed towards my home, I dreaded my return to a dry country. Looking back, I see the red flags myself. But at the time, I don't think anyone else saw them. Consumption around alcohol is so normalized, not just in the Dubai expat culture to which we belonged, but also Canadian and Western culture in general, that I don't even think that Claire thought my drinking was something to be alarmed about. In Dubai and Abu Dhabi, it is totally normal for expats to be chanting Flip Cup in a restaurant at two in the afternoon on a Friday. It was a holiday destination. But binge drinking is a global pattern, particularly in the West, and it is not unique to expat life. I was convinced that alcohol was the problem, and if I moved to a country where alcohol was legal, I would somehow have fewer problems or be happier. I was unaware that until I stopped romanticizing or idealizing the future, I'd never find happiness in the now.