Updates have been hard to come by, mainly because internet access in Lebanon has been really poor. The country is really suffering and trying to rebuild the broken infrastructure since the war, and many of the places I visited had either no electricity, no internet, no water, or all three. But the country has been magical for me, and I look forward to returning one day.
Right now, I am in Petra, near Wadi Rum, in Jordan. It has been a crazy few days. I arrived in the capital of Amman yesterday morning and today I took a local bus first to Mount Nebo, a high spot in the geography where you can see the Dead Sea, Palestine, Jerusalem, Jerico (the oldest walled city in the world), and the river Jordan. It is a crucible of religion and civilization. It it also a poignant reminder of why things need to get worked out in the middle east if any of these countries have a chance to grow. The owner of my hotel in Amman lamented the fact that his country, Jordan, had some of the oldest ruins in the world, was the birthplace of society, and today it struggles to stay afloat amid a sea of extremism, ecological disaster, and political turmoil.
Anyway. I am now in Petra, near one of the new wonders of the world, Wadi Rum. I plan to spend the day in there tomorrow, getting there early, before it gets too hot or too crowded. It will be a highlight of this trip, I am sure.
Doing this trip, with a little less than a month to go made me realize that there is a quote that perhaps defines my life. “The desire to attain something decreases as the difficulty to attain that something also decreases.” I like going after the hard things, I think. This trip is bound to push me to my limits, in terms of my mental endurance, my physical endurance (it was over 40C when I visited a 6th century crusader fortress today), and my ability to bend and glide around obstacles. So, I make this promise to myself. Yield more. Be more flexible. In Buddhist terms, I need to be like the water. Water is one of the most powerful forces in the world, and yet it has no shape. It moulds itself to fit in any spot, in any space, and I need to do that as well.
Two photos for you. The first is a shot of the village of Becharre, in Lebanon, taken at sunset. The second shot is a photo of a section of the ruins at Biblos, one of the oldest Roman ruins in the world.
More to come, I am sure.





