I often meet people in India and we lock eyes and smile. There’s an unexplainable knowingness. Sometimes, they ask me if I’m Hindu and I reply that I’m “Undo.”
I often come to India to edit things in my life that are meant to go away: a bad diet, a reliance on alcohol, an emotional grudge, an addiction to my career treadmill. Somehow, this place gives me the freedom to let go. Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield traveled to Asia as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s and learned the following in India, “In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived; How well we have loved; How well we have learned to let go.”
The first half of our lives we accumulate. The second half of our lives we edit.
-Chip
P.S. To get a little flavor of just one day here in Jaipur, India, here are four short videos I recorded including the early morning hustle at the vegetable market, a devotional kirtan and prayer experience in an outdoor temple, a snake charmer on the street near the Wind Palace, and all the final prep one hour before a gigantic Indian wedding was about to start next to our hotel just on the open streets of Jaipur. Hope this gives you a sense (and scents) of my trip.