Looking to the Future
“Things do not change; we change.”
Henry David Thoreau, American essayist, poet and philosopher
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Curiosity occasionally prompts me to ask myself ‘What if?’
What if I had turned left instead of right? What if I stayed put instead of going forward? What if I had continued living in the United States, working as a printing broker, met an American woman and lived out my remaining years there? What if I had decided to move to Japan or Mexico or the Netherlands instead of Thailand? What if I just took an extended vacation? How would my life be different?
I will never know. Although we can never go back in time, we all do have crystal balls that provide a glimpse into the future. If we smoke, we know there is a high probability
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With age comes wisdom and if I had it to do all over again, the one thing I would have done more religiously is save money. Save your money. Sacrifice a little now for security in a future. Success or failure is all up to you. Am I an expatriate or an immigrant? Both. I can deal with most of Thailand’s negatives but there is one negative that constantly has me considering life back in the United States –– if you are a foreigner living in Thailand, you will never be Thai. Although this is one of the reasons I moved to the country, I failed to understand the significance of these five words. I am no different from Mexican, Cuban, Thai, Chinese, or other immigrant in the United States; as an American in Thailand, I have always been aware of this but it took time to understand that no matter how long I have lived here, they will always call me farang. If I knew then what I know now, would I do it all over again? Hell yeah! I would do it for the adventure, the rollercoaster ride into the unknown, for the thrill of experiencing life in a country so foreign to my own. Do I think I’ll live in Thailand for the rest of my life? Looking ahead, it now seems unlikely. I will probably always spend a few months out of the year here though for as I previously stated, I still