Changing Our Lives

It seems like we are constantly on the prowl for new ways to change our lives. Every day women are starting new diets, programs, and exercises that they are convinced will change their lives for the better. And we all know that these kinds of resolutions are about as good as saying that you are going to stop picking your nose. Besides New Years, the most common time you can find people trying to change their lives is church. Every week some kid at church prays and asks, “Please help us to learn something that we can apply and change our lives.” Come on, Really? This is dumb. Why would I need to change your life? I’m already at church dammit.

I mean, I could understand if you were plastered, sitting over the toilet in the back of Sammy’s Saloon and you started praying, “Oh, lord, please help me to change my life.” But if I am in church, why change?

Cows in Cambodia

The other day I went with a group of friends who had free tickets to go see the movie “Tooth Fairy”. It was one of those movies that you walk out of and you want to demand your money back plus time and a half. It was so terrible that I was embarrassed for everyone that was in any way involved with this movie, including other people in the theatre. I did, however, meet a friend of a friend, who changed my life by opening my mind to something about my country of Cambodia I had never consciously thought about. When people hear I went to Cambodia I get a lot of different reactions.

“How was it?”

“That’s crazy!”

“What was it like?”

“Now that’s in South America, right?”

But when CL was told that I had recently returned from the homeland of Angkor Watt, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, open sewers, and bamboo huts, he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Oh, I heard there is a shooting range there, where you can blow up a cow with a rocket launcher. Yeah, and I heard it’s only a couple hundred bucks.”

Now while serving in Cambodia I found a lot of problems and things that bugged me about the country. It was slowly dissolving as the land was taken by Vietnam and Thailand, the government is among the most corrupt in the world, the people are poor and stupid (this is not a mindless personal attack. This is true. During the war Pol Pot killed off anyone that knew how to read, the only survivors were as dumb as the people who funded the film “Tooth Fairy”). Cambodia is my country. It is my second home. I love the place and the people almost as much as I love a good booger joke, but at times it was hard to be patriotic about a country with so many flaws and no hope of progress.

Finally I had found something that I could brag about. I found something about Cambodia that made me want to stand tall and be a better human being. I discovered a set of values that has been lost to Americans, but still highly valued somewhere deep in Asia. “In my country of Cambodia, you can purchase and blow up a cow with a rocket launcher. Live long Cambodia!”

These guys are lame and missed the cow. But you can get the idea...