Same Same

I love good endings, and we had the best ending to our time with Jason & Jill this weekend. We left Quy Nhon (kwin yawn) by train to Tam Ky (tom key) and then on to Hoi An (hoy on). Hoi An is charming, almost European-esque – it’s on the water, with shops and restaurants lining each side and lots of alleys to wander through.

It’s a definite tourist town, which is a bit of an anomaly for us. Probably the most English we’ve heard in a café in a long time (not to mention it just being the first time in a café in awhile), and the first day I was here I thought about divers – don’t they go through a process that’s kind of a slow re-entry to the surface after being submerged for awhile? Well, I took a deep breath and thought “okay, this is the beginning of that process for us.”

But even in entering a town where there are more people the “same” as us than not, there is a lot that is “same same”, the Asian equivalent to our “same, but different”. On the one hand, many of the travelers here are on the same kind of trip, but there are so many dynamics we’ve been allowed to experience that are missing from the typical “backpacker” trip … so many more faces to associate with places than sights alone. I want my life to be this way – same same. In the world, not of it. I’m nowhere close, and fight the desire of self-indulgence (not just satisfaction, mind you, but indulgence) on a nearly daily basis, but maybe success is more in the constant tension than anything else. What I know for sure is that the One who made me the same as those around me can also give me a heart that is same same.

“Only by full dependence upon Him are the hidden potentialities of our natures realized. Apart from this we are but half-men, malformed & unbeautiful members of a noble race once made to wear the image of its Creator.” – A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of Man