I’m spending a few weeks in Thailand and wanted to share insights that have been popping up along the way. Travel has a way of giving you space to reflect on what’s important, appreciate how far you’ve come/how you’ve changed, as well as remind of what you still have to work on. The theme of this post is “All suffering is based on misperception.” If you like my writing, please give it a like and feel free to share with a friend.
The Unhinged Taxi Driver
The beginning of our trip to Thailand was quite eventful. A few days prior, I came down with a high fever, which turned out to be influenza, forcing me into isolation. It was tough not being able to hold baby Noah even for just a couple of days. I was finally feeling better when we arrived.
Upon our arrival at Bangkok airport, we were assigned a taxi driver at the airport pick up. A clunky pink cab rolled up and the driver wobbled out of the car. He had long black hair, wore a straw hat and had a battered face with a distant look, neglecting even a simple “hello.” In hindsight, I should have taken this as a red flag, but we decided to get in the taxi anyway. After a few minutes of silence in the cab we started to make conversation.
As it turned out, he was a Vietnam War vet, and the ceiling of his cab was plastered with pictures, including his 16-year old self brandishing an M16. Among the photos were images of Mrs. Doubtfire and a hippopotamus, strategically placed next to each other to illustrate a specific point. As we passed by slightly larger women, he would point at the pictures, then out the window, and would say “look, hippo!” We chuckled nervously.
To add to the oddity, he asked about our son Noah's age (4 months old) and asked if he would become a ladyboy. Okkayyyy…I have been in many taxis in South East Asia, so this sort of of banter wasn’t new and was partly due to a difference in cultural norms, but something was feeling particularly off about the situation.
Get us Out of Here, Please
It quickly became apparent that he had had no idea how to get to the hotel (which, as it turned out, was right on the main street) and was, as far as I could tell, suffering from some form of dementia. We didn’t have wifi, and he didn’t know how to use Google maps. He instead called the hotel to try and get directions. After minutes of back and forth, he handed us the phone. The English-speaking Thai hotel staff said, “I have no idea what your taxi driver is saying. I suggest you get out of the cab now and find a different driver.”
So we kindly asked him to stop the cab. But despite being clearly lost, he first refused to let us out of the cab, insisting that he knew the way. He was continuously grinding the gears and glancing at his phone, and we nearly crashed multiple times. I made eye contact with my wife; Umm, what do we do now? We stayed calm as to not to upset baby Noah, and for the time being stayed in the cab as he drove erratically through the streets.
It was turning into a sketchy situation, but there wasn’t really any time to feel afraid. It reminds me of a point that Dr. Peter Levine made about animals in the wild. A gazelle chased by a lion doesn’t feel fear, he says, which is an emotional reaction. Instead, it undergoes a process of “sympathetic mobilization energy”, where the body gears up for action in response to a potential threat (releasing stress hormones, increasing heart rate, etc). That’s very much what it felt like — it was time to mobilize.
Making a Run For It
Eventually after going up and down the same street for a while and realizing that he was completely lost, he stopped on a side street to try and figure out where to go. We seized the opportunity to grab our bags and made a quick exit, my wife surreptitiously snapping a photo of the license plate.
And then he got out of his taxi and followed us down the street as we tried to hail a new cab, insisting we get back in his cab. What were his intentions? It was hard to say. I politely told him we were okay, really. And yet he continued to stand next to us. After some time we finally flagged down another cab. When a cab that we hailed stopped in front of us, he started saying something in Thai to the driver, and the driver rolled the window back up and sped off. Crap, is he telling other taxi drivers not to let us ride with them?
We walked down the street a little further to try and flag another cab, while I continued to tell him No, thank you. We will find a new cab. This time when he talked to the new driver, they didn’t speed off. Instead, he handed the driver the 300 baht ($9) we’d paid him to take us to the hotel. After paying for our cab, he waved goodbye to us, apologizing profusely that he hadn’t been able to find our hotel.
All Suffering is Based on Misperception
I was shook up and relieved that my family and I were safe. It could’ve ended badly. And yet, I wasn’t angry, or upset. I saw the pained look in his eye as we left in the new cab. He was confused, embarrassed, disappointed, and frustrated. He was legitimately trying to help us get to the hotel. The belief that he was somehow acting maliciously evaporated when he paid for our cab ride. He was just a confused, old guy trying to do his job.
There was, it seems, a total lack of understanding that his own driving was erratic and unsafe. How could you be mad at this? I felt a deep connection to this confusion. This fellow human being was simply trying to help us in the only way he knew that he could. But due to life circumstances, age, very likely a traumatic background, health issues, and perhaps more, there wasn’t any awareness (or, if there was, not much care) that his driving was unsafe. In doing so, he was unknowingly causing suffering to others.
In some form or another, we have all been there, in the taxi drivers shoes. Perhaps not as recklessly, but we have all found ourselves in situations where our intentions are misconstrued, and where, despite our best efforts, we unknowingly cause suffering. It is most evident that we are acting from a delusion/misconception when our emotional state is contracted, clingy and negative — insisting your view is right, acting out of anger, fear or frustration, and shutting down instead of opening up.
Seeing that we all do this makes it easier not to hold grudges when we see it in others. This allows us to see things more clearly and respond kindly. For example, it would have been easy to conclude that “all taxi drivers in Thailand are bad” or “Thailand is dangerous for children!” and let this experience color my view of the country. Instead, bringing some understanding to what happened allows me to learn from what happened, yet transcend generalizing from a narrow viewpoint based on one experience.
Of course, given that we almost crashed multiple times, I think it’s very possible that the situation happens again, and that he ends up physically hurting himself or others. Spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh famously said that compassion is a verb. The compassionate thing to do here was to report him to the taxi company, which we promptly did the next day.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment below :)
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