Future unknown~ heartbreaking news coming from Xinjiang about China holding over a million Uighur muslims in re-education centers for the purpose of removing their #faith which they label as a virus. History keeps repeating itself and we humans never seem to learn. Their most recent tactic is breaking up families whose strength and cohesion they perceive as a threat to future China.
It has been said that the chains that bind us are mostly self-manufactured by our own self-esteem and pride. Personal development is an uncomfortable journey upward and into the unknown, if only we dare.
Day 54 of 365~
Image taken in the entrance to the old tea house in Kashgar, Xinjiang
They arrive to this earth relying on our coded ability to host them as they take human form. They are born tiny and helpless and it is up to us to support, care for and nurture them till they can care for themselves. They carry in them the promise and possibility of a better tomorrow. They are our most valuable assets. Why can’t we all put their wellbeing before that of wealth, power and greed?
Day 53 of 365~
Image taken of a child in the old streets of Kashgar, Xinjiang
In the town of Tashkurgan, home of the Tajik people in Xinjiang, bordering Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, I met this boy in the old mountainous Pamir region. It is said that this town marks the middle way between Europe and China. The faces I saw there were unforgettable.
Another month completed, on to the next. You can see more about this project HERE
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Being a lover of travel, you learn to get yourself used to enduring the pain of separation. When you travel to a new place it is not just the people, the buildings, the nature and the food that you meet, but also the essences that live in that place and those are the things you end up missing the most. The very subtle things that you don’t see with your eyes, but only feel, can be with as they come together to make up the version of that part of the earth and imprint it in your mind.
As all journeys must end, so does this month’s adventure into the beautiful world that is Xinjiang. It was a very enjoyable but a difficult month for me in terms of finding the 30 images to show you from the 4000 in my files. There is so much more that remains unseen and so many stories that remain untold.
But on to the next…
All humans on this planet are created with the same basic design, spirit, soul, mind, brain, body, emotions, senses… all are born and all will eventually pass on.
Thoughts like these make me see people differently while traveling in strange places. The knowledge that we are all human, that we all get sad, we get happy, we are curious, we are suspicious, we dream, we wish, we love, we dislike, we eat, we sleep, we procreate, we create, and we share this beautiful planet under the great big blue sky. These are the wonders that make me love traveling, discovery and meeting other humans.
photo taken: In the courtyard of the old mosque in Kashgar, a gathering of Uyghur men.
Help your brother’s boat across, and your own will reach the shore. ~Hindu Proverb
There is something so endearing about watching siblings helping each other. It is nature’s way. They were placed together to foster bonds in some cases unbreakable and incomprehensible to the outside world. These two boys passing by on my last day in the old city of Kashgar just caught me and drove me into a contemplation about life, family and the mysteries of being human.
In our lives we get so comfortable with the familiar, we anchor ourselves in the past and we walk around with the certainty of the now. The future, we file in our minds as unknown, not yet tread, uncertain, and we handle it with the tools of our past based on what we already know and have done. But what if the rules of the game have changed? What if the future is dealing us a new card? What if the path is about to change direction? How then do we get ourselves fit to interpret the future? Where do find the tools to update ourselves and be ready for what is clearly changing all what we know from governments, weather patterns, mental possibilities, arts, technology… everything that we see resulting from that which we don’t see?
Woke up to so many more questions today…
photo taken: an old man walking on a Kashgar city street~ Xinjiang
Behind her pink window, she sat, she looked, she watched, she felt safe, she followed me with her eyes, she questioned me with her mind, and she half smiled when I waved goodbye.