Month: May 2019

Let It Ride

Going with the flow.

It can be a treasured trait.

There are many who aspire to wake up each morning and see where the day takes them. Each occurrence representing a new adventure, or a new slew of possibilities.

I must admit I do not subscribe to this theory.

My life is far more measured. I crave control and loathe surprises.

The more prepared I am, the better off I’ll be. That’s what I’ve been saying for years.

This mindset has helped me get ahead.

It’s encouraged me to keep my eyes open. It’s helped me to keep learning. And, to a great degree, it’s prevented me from making the same mistake twice.

Yet, I’ve found it’s not a great life philosophy to espouse.

For if there’s one predictable trait in life, it’s unpredictability.

Fresh surprises await around every corner, and the best laid plans often go to waste.

When they do, the key is to not rue our misfortune. Indeed, we are better off adapting to the hand we’ve been dealt and moving forward.

We are better off letting it ride.

In recent years, I’ve slowly started to accept this edict. As I’ve added more and more to my plate — including business school classes and a volunteer leadership position — I’ve come to realize my expectations for how things should go are akin to guesses.

With a jam-packed schedule, I have to be on top of my game for everything to go off without a hitch. But there are plenty of curveballs out there to ruin my carefully choreographed plan. Poor health, bad weather and exhaustion are three that come to mind.

These issues aren’t new, of course. I’ve been wrangling with them all my life to some degree. But with less free time on my calendar and more responsibilities on my plate, their presence has provided me bigger problems than ever before.

Initially, I lamented the opportunities these issues cost me. I shook my fist at the sky after outdoor events I’d planned got rained out. I wondered why that nasty cold had to show up on the week I had plans. I beat myself up over not staying up even later to study for that exam — even if a lack of sleep was what led to my poor marks.

But gradually, I came to realize that carrying this baggage did me no good.

What had happened, had happened. Whether or not I had expected it, there was no use in rehashing the past.

The best I could do was to move forward. To let it ride.

So, I did. And that change had a drastic impact.

First, I noticed that most of what I had previously pined over was immaterial — or, at best, minor. Sure, getting sauce stains on my white shirt was not ideal. Neither was sleeping in and missing my morning workout. But, aside from looking like a slob in the moment or being out of sync with my routine, there were no lingering effects. Better not to waste time and energy on it.

Second, I was better able to think procedurally. When I came across an unexpected occurrence, I was able to think about next steps instead of ruing my lack of foresight. Timeliness was important in these instances. I was wasting far less time paralyzed by the question of what happened and instead spending more of it on the question of what to do next.

And third, my control-centric nature was able to find some inner peace. While it would seem that my lack of concern as to what had already happened would upset my controlling nature, the truth is I couldn’t control what happened if I tried. It was already written, but I had far more control over what came next.

In short, my energy was devoted to the right places. And because of that, I was able to be more productive.

I am not the only one who can benefit from this shift. We all can reap the rewards of letting it ride from time to time.

The key is discretion.

After all, it does us no good to let it ride all the time. If we just leave everything up to fate, we cede the change to determine our own destiny. Worse still, we’ll appear unmotivated and unreliable.

Yet, micromanaging the past is a fool’s errand as well. It does us no use to cry over spilled milk. The past is past.

It’s finding the balance between these extremes that’s the trickiest. Knowing when to let it ride and when to take charge.

It can be tricky finding this sweet spot. But that quest is worthwhile.

So, fight through the discomfort. Take time to determine what to hang on to and what to let go.

And when the situation is right, let it ride.

Juggling to Achieve Balance

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a juggler.

OK, not the juggler you probably are thinking of.

I haven’t tossed balls in the air, let alone swords. And I’ve never breathed any fire.

The type of juggling I’ve mastered hasn’t helped me bustle on the street corners. It hasn’t made me the life of the party.

But it has helped me navigate the complexities of life.

What have I juggled? Responsibilities and priorities. Confidence and doubt. And solitude and community.

Managing this elaborate juggling act hasn’t been easy. But the struggle has made me stronger.

To understand why, it’s important to look at the mechanics of juggling.

While we are often mesmerized by the shiny optics of juggling — the objects pirouetting through the air, the hands deftly negotiating the process of catching an object and tossing it back in the air — it is something that which we cannot readily see that drives the action.

Time.

Time is both stubborn and relentless. It moves at the same rate, never expanding or reducing itself to our needs. In a world full of uncertainty, it’s the one constant we refer back to.

These characteristics make time both finite and universal. And it leaves us with a choice. We must either use time to our advantage, or watch it become our detriment.

Juggling requires us to look these brutal facts square in the face, and not back down. For if we fail to master time, we are toast.

In the case of the street juggler, this means the objects come crashing to the ground. The show is over. The opportunity to win hearts and minds (and dollars) vanishes into thin air.

In a more general sense, failing to use time to our advantage means racking up opportunity costs. It means wondering What if?

In either case, time demands a rhythm. We cannot add a 25th hour to the day, just as the street juggler can’t make the objects they’re tossing freeze in midair.

We must do what we can to make the most of the limited time we have — whether for spectacle or for survival.

I had to come to terms with this reality when I started business school.

My life was already busy at the time I enrolled. I was balancing a demanding full-time job, a tri-weekly exercise regimen and my weekly Words of the West articles. I was also heavily involved in my alma mater’s local alumni chapter, and I tended to cook dinner from scratch. If I had any time left over, I’d spend it with friends.

Suddenly, I had a new set of obligations — classes, homework, group projects — to fit into my existing day-to-day. And time wasn’t about to stand still.

So, I made some tough decisions. I cut out most homecooked meals — a prudent decision, as I was in class several evenings a week anyway. I dedicated specific nights for writing Words of the West articles, instead of waiting for inspiration to strike me. And I moved my workouts from late afternoon to the crack of dawn.

But even with my meticulous planning, I found myself in a rut. For I had failed to recognize a key fact — daily life is far from uniform.

Some weeks were more challenging than others at work. Some weeks had more assignments or exams than other at school. And some mornings my workouts took longer than others, because I was too exhausted to go any faster.

These sound like simple concepts, but I had not planned for them. How could I? After all, there was no slack in my schedule when things were going well.

Still, I needed to get everything done. No matter how crazy a particular week got, work and school were non-negotiable. And I needed those workouts to stay in shape physically and stay sane mentally. Cutting any of these items out of my routine was out of the question.

So, I started juggling. I got up earlier, stayed up later and immersed myself in whatever task was at hand. I renewed my commitment to efficiency, scrapping any spare moments where I might daydream or otherwise catch my breath.

This was challenging. It was stressful. But in the end, it was worth it.

For as my juggling act became routine, something unexpected happened. I started to find balance.

The three pillars of my life started to settle into an even foundation, each taking up an equivalent portion of my time and energy.

None of those pillars could take undue influence, since I had no more resources available to give. And strangely, that fact gave me peace of mind.

A situation that not long before had felt like scaling a cliff face transformed into a run up a steep hill — still strenuous, but overtly manageable.

Simply put, my commitment to juggling my priorities helped me find the balance I needed to thrive.

Now, I realize this is an extreme example. Not everyone will put themselves into the scenario I did. And if they do find themselves in that spot, they might make the hard choice I didn’t — by cutting out exercise or only giving 70% effort at school.

But even when the margins aren’t quite so thin, event when the heat is off, juggling our priorities can be useful.

For it can boost our discipline. It can invigorate our focus. And, in doing so, it can help us find the balance in our lives that would otherwise elude us.

So, regardless which priorities take up your attention, consider applying the rules of juggling to them.

It might seem like a thankless task. But you’ll be grateful for it in the end.

The Double Edge of Reliability

How important is reliability to you?

Well, it’s pretty darn important to me.

I’ve hung my hat on being reliable throughout much of my life. I saw to it that others could expect me to show up  — both physically and mentally — and put in a full effort. Every time.

My life motto has reflected this ethos. Be present. Be informed. Be better.

My willingness to show up and dive in has helped boost my reputation as someone who could be counted on. Someone who could be considered steady. Someone who could do the little things needed to help propel the greater cause.

These traits are treasured in our society. They’re viewed as the building blocks of success — a perspective that has often proved as true in practice at it has in theory.

This is one reason why a proud to espouse the value of reliability. Why it’s ingrained in my mind as surely is it is in my soul.

Yes, reliability is a gift in our society. But to those who espouse it, it can also be a curse.

 

Nearly a century ago, a politician rose to head of state in Europe.

The ashes of World War I were still smoldering on the continent. Financial and political turmoil abounded. And into this void stepped this new leader.

The politician’s name was Benito Mussolini. The country was Italy.

Those well-versed in history know the rest. Mussolini was a fascist dictator. Il duce’s totalitarian reign resembled at times resembled a police state for his two-decade rule. As World War II brewed, Mussolini got in bed with Adolf Hitler and the Axis powers, ultimately sealing his demise.

Benito Mussolini was a terrible leader. A tyrant. If not for the mass atrocities committed by Hitler to the north, Mussolini might have been the name we referred to when speaking of evil and infamy.

Yet, look at Mussolini’s reign from a different angle, and another word describes il duce quite well.

Reliable.

Mussolini came to power after years of factionalism had fractured Italy. Although the country was a monarchy prior to World War I, regionalism dominated over a national identity. The gap between rich and poor was striking — so striking that many Italians had moved to America in hopes of a better life. And the Mafia corrupted power at the local level, spreading fear and exacerbating inequality.

In short, the nation was unstable.

After Mussolini’s March on Rome, Italy became reliable. Factionalism was wiped out, often by brute force. The Mafia was stripped of its teeth. And things were so efficient that a joke started making the rounds: Mussolini makes the trains run on time.

The lesson here is stark. Reliability without context is not always a good thing.

Here in America, we despise fascism. More than 70 years after Mussolini’s execution, we speak of the dangers of his ideology. In a land built on liberty, there is no room for a My Way Or The Highway edict of rule.

No, reliability is more of an underhanded concept here. One enforced by the weight of expectation rather than the barrel of a gun.

Reliability is subtly woven into the narrative of the American dream. The narrative that exclaims Show up, work hard and good things will happen.

Yet, that narrative is more mirage than reality.

For our society is one transfixed more by flash than by substance. We notice what is exceptional more than what is reliable.

Many of our most powerful leaders — of industry, policy and influence — got to their destination by being outstanding in their field in some capacity. They didn’t get there simply by being reliable.

In fact, reliability is often a flaw for the most powerful. Disciplined, unrelenting consistency in all facets of their role is often lacking.

This is why there is so much turnover at the top of corporate ladder. This is why politicians are so mistrusted. This is why even elite athletes see their fair share of struggles in the limelight.

We see signs of this delicate balance throughout our culture. Go see a superhero movie, for instance, and you’ll likely find the main character has flaws that equal their exceptional talents.

The message is clear. Exceptionalism can take you the extra mile, warts and all.

This is a problem for those who strive for reliability rather than cultivating exceptional talents. And it’s a disaster for those who have all the intangibles, but nothing to make heads turn.

Those who bank on being reliable might not see their deposit guaranteed. They could find themselves taken for granted by those with more power and influence. Or exploited by those who embark on their self-serving quests for stardom — quests that can go a lot further when there’s someone else doing the dirty work of consistency.

In fact, it could be said that a focus on reliability in our society benefits others at the expense of ourselves. Our family, friends, colleagues and supervisors can count on us, and that gives them peace of mind. Yet, we are confined to our promise of consistency, with no mercy from those same stakeholders if we break that bond.

The pressure ratchets up. The burden gets heavier. And soon we find ourselves confined to a prison of our own making.

I have seen this in my life and in my career.

There have been times when colleagues have taken advantage of my reliability to further their own objectives. There have been times when those around me have capitalized on my team-first attitude to avoid putting in their fair share. And there have been times when my perception as The Reliable Choice has barred me from access to new opportunities.

Each and every time, I found myself left behind as others got ahead through achievement or omission. Each and every time, the burden upon me grew, with no sign of relief on the horizon.

Others have not always taken these actions with malice. Most of the time, they ‘ve subconsciously used me as a crutch — my ethos to show up and put in the work acting as a security blanket for their needs.

Yet, regardless of intent, I still ended up with the short end of the stick.

I am not bitter or vengeful about these incidents. But as I’ve matured, I’ve learned to be transparent about them — for self-preservation purposes, if nothing else.

For I’ve learned that positioning oneself as reliable is as destructive as it is altruistic. That providing such a latent value makes it all the more convenient to get passed over.

I now know that I must provide value elsewhere, either by exposing my differentiating talents or finding new ones to cultivate.

This is one of the reasons I started Words of the West. As someone who’s long taken to writing the way ducks take to water, I craved somewhere to hone my talents in a manner that benefits those around me. This forum provided the outlet I needed for this mission.

I stuck to my trademark reliability — I’ve shared a weekly fresh article here for nearly 200 weeks in a row. But Words of the West is about the meanings conveyed in my writing more than the schedule of when they’re released.

Or perhaps it’s a little bit of both. The gravitas of the written word can be a gift. When that gift can be both anticipated and enjoyed, it can become a delight.

A delight for me as a writer. And — I hope — a delight for you, the reader who has so graciously taken the time to hear what I have to say.

This is how we can win with reliability. By layering it beneath something of greater notoriety. By making it the foundation for something that commands attention.

The ability to turn heads is a feat of strength in today’s world. The ability to turn heads consistently is a superpower.

When we make ourselves reliably extraordinary, we can soar.

What are we waiting for?

What We Know And What We Discover

Knowledge.

It’s all powerful. And all essential.

We can’t get far without knowing much of anything.

But just how far we do go does not necessarily depend on how much knowledge we accrue.

Yes, knowledge is a paradox. Its importance can only be measured through its applicability.

In other words, what we know is far less important that what we do with that knowledge.

Several years ago, I took an online assessment.

Much like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it measured my personal traits and classified them. But unlike the Myers-Briggs test, it only focused on strengths.

After the assessment was complete, I analyzed the results. Two stuck out — Input and Learner.

I was confused at first. Weren’t both of those terms the same thing?

But the more I thought about it, the more this bifurcation made sense.

You see, it’s one thing to rack up oodles of facts and figures. It’s another to use that knowledge to make the world a better place. And to make our own lives more fulfilling at the same time.

In other words, the process of learning is a more applicably useful skill than the process of absorption. All things being equal, it’s better to have the skills of a learner than to simply make one’s brain a pure input mechanism of the world’s amassed knowledge.

This is not an absolute rule, of course. There are notable exceptions.

Jeopardy contestants can make a fortune simply by amassing a wealth of data within their brains, and withdrawing from that memory bank instantaneously when prompted. Baseball statisticians have had a prominent place within the realms of TV telecasts and newspaper box scores for years. And now, their data is being used to impact the strategy of the game.

Still, each of these examples required more than pure recall. Each, in its own way, required application.

The Jeopardy contestants had to know the steps to take and people to contact to make it to the show’s auditions in the first place. They had to adapt their knowledge recall skills to the rules of the game instantaneously in those auditions, simply to show up on our TV screens and smartphones.

Baseball statisticians had to get to know the whims of sports media members — the newspaper writers, radio hosts and TV commentators who asked for the data statisticians had at hand. These media members were focused on telling stories to a captive audience, not reading lists of facts. The statisticians had to learn to serve up the data in a manner that fit into those narratives as seamlessly as Cinderella’s foot fit into the glass slipper.

Yes, even in the environments primed for pure retention and recall, learning is essential.

The Input vs. Learner split is not a matter of opinion. It has its roots in Information Theory.

Information Theory conveys how we build our knowledge repositories. Yet, perhaps most critically, it describes how we organize it.

According to a prevalent Information Theory framework, all that we know can be split into three terms: Data, Information and Knowledge.

Data are the bits and bytes of raw information. Think of data as the Excel spreadsheet you’ve yet to open. In other words, data on their own are unintelligible — aside from our recognition of their existence.

Information is a surprise. The unexpected nature of the information shakes us from our routine. The shock to our system makes us hyper-aware of what’s been thrown at us. It aids our ability to remember.

And Knowledge is simply the repository of information we’ve accumulated over time. The novelty is long gone. Yet, it remains in our memory banks, ready for recall when needed.

This framework favors what’s new over what’s known. It states that we feed off of novelty, and that our yearning for that sensation fuels our growth.

This is bad news for those whose brains are configured for Knowledge Input — as I am. Most of the time, our talents are as useless as the wings on a penguin.

Yet, I believe this framework is spot on. From the time we are young, pushing our boundaries stimulates us. Novelty drives us to take our first steps and say our first words. It helps us overcome Stranger Danger and grow into independent personalities. It keeps us engaged through more than a decade of schooling — even as our bodies and our interactions with our peers evolve.

Even after adolescence, novelty reigns supreme. It’s what convinces us to apply to that job, to go on that date, to take the plunge and get hitched, to buy that house, to adopt that pet or to have kids of our own. With each step, we learn and grow — by necessity, if not by sheer willpower.

Discovery is second nature to us. It’s been passed intuitively from generation to generation for eons. From Eve’s first bite of the forbidden apple all the way to modern day, we’ve put a premium on discovery over knowledge.

Our world is built around this paradigm. How could it not be?

Everything from financial markets to academic research is about finding that new bit of insight. About getting that adrenaline rush from the pure bliss of novelty. About going where we haven’t been before.

We speak glowingly of the dreamers, marvel at the innovators and laud the risk-takers. In a world primed for discovery, these brave souls do more than inspire us. They light the way.

Knowledge is just the base in this construct. It’s the foundation from which new discoveries can be made.

Knowledge certainly has value. Why else would we mourn the burning of the library at Alexandria, more than 2,000 years after the blaze turned the great repository of knowledge to ash?

Yet, the value of knowledge is not infinite. In the societies we’ve built, facts and figures can only get us so far.

The implication is simple.

To grow our potential, we must expand our perspective.

We must be open to discovery, to novelty. To learning what’s possible and making it reality — even if it takes us away from the cocoon of what we already know.

Of course, in practice, it’s not that simple.

It’s a challenge for us to keep pushing the envelope. To motivate ourselves to keep finding what’s new and surprising. To embrace the continuum of change.
It’s all too easy to get comfortable. To settle into familiar patterns. To ease off the throttle.

There’s less resistance this way. Life is more of a breeze and less of a grind.

The siren song is calling. Calling for us to circle the wagons around what we know and call it a day.

We must not heed these cries. We must push forward.

Our growth depends on it. So do the betterment of ourselves and the world around us.

There is no time to take a shortcut on this mission. Not yesterday. Not today. Not tomorrow.

The next chapter in our journey awaits. And what we know is just the start.

Discover on.

On To China

When I was 10 years old, my parents did something crazy.

They took our family on a month-long trip to China.

Now, on the face of it, this might not sound so outlandish. People go on exotic vacations all the time. And China is an emergent tourist destination, filled with the capitalist façade of the western world — particularly in the years since it hosted the 2008 Olympics.

But this was in 1998. And it was the first trip outside the United States for both me and my sister, who was 7 at the time.

So, yeah. It was pretty crazy.

The unusual decision my parents made becomes more sensible with context.

When I was six months old, my parents hosted a young woman from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, who had emigrated to the U.S. with a Green Card. She became an integral part of our family, quickly gaining the honorary title of “Chinese sister.” She served as my babysitter initially, and later attended college in Vermont.

After graduation, she landed a position with JP Morgan in Hong Kong. Yet, she would make the long trek back to New York at least once a year to visit us.

After a few years, she approached my parents with a novel proposal. What it we all rendezvoused in China?

Hong Kong had been transferred from British to Chinese rule by then, enabling easier travel between the mainland and the territory. So, our Chinese sister could travel with us on much of our journey. She also offered to cover the round-trip plane tickets for my sister and myself — which was no small feat.

The plan was set. It was on to China.

In the weeks before our journey to the Far East, I felt anxious. I had only ventured outside of the Northeast twice, and one of those trips happened when I was too young to remember it. I had only been on an airplane a handful of times, and never for more than 6 hours. And I knew nothing of life outside of the U.S., aside from what I’d seen in a few movies.

My father tried to reassure me, but he was also brutally honest about what to expect. He said that instead of toilets, some Chinese restrooms just had holes in the ground to squat over. (This turned out to be true, but not on a wide scale.) He said that not everyone in China would understand English. (This was a massive understatement.) And he said many restaurants would not have forks. (This also turned out to be true, so we brought a reusable plastic silverware kit with us.)

All of this only exacerbated my anxiety, so I tried not to think about the trip until I was en route. That was probably for the best, because I had no idea what I was in for.

The journey started with a cross-country flight to San Francisco. After a day venturing around the City by the Bay, we got on a 2 AM flight to South Korea.

The Transpacific flight felt like an eternity. I stayed awake the entire time, watching the GPS tracker on the overhead TV screens and looking down at the clouds and the ocean below. By the time we landed in Seoul, I was exhausted. Yet, the morning sun was blinding, so I forced myself to stay awake after our subsequent flight to Beijing took off.

After a couple more hours of staring out an airplane window at the sea and sky, I heard an announcement from the captain asking us to prepare for landing. I was confused, because all I saw around us was a giant cloud. Surely, we couldn’t be about to land. Could we?

We descended through the cloud, and I heard the landing gear deploy. At the last second, the clouds cleared and I saw the runway come into view. We touched down safely and the plane taxied over to a dilapidated airport terminal.

Welcome to China.

I would soon learn that the cloud the airplane had descended through was no cloud at all. It was actually haze from China’s rampant pollution.

That haze never really subsided. During our week in Beijing, there was sunshine in the forecast on all but one day (when it rained). But I never saw blue skies. It just looked dreary and overcast.

I had never seen such thick pollution before. And I’ve yet to see it since.

But the haze was only the tip of the iceberg. After we got to the hotel from the airport, my sister and I took a nap. Suddenly, our mother woke us up, insisting that we go for an afternoon walk to adjust to the time change. It was on this walk that I noticed how different things looked.

There were no glass skyscrapers in our midst. The city buildings looked old and uniform. So did the vehicles roaming the massive boulevards, which were six lanes in each direction.

Crossing the street was an adventure, as drivers seemed to ignore traffic laws at will. We had to join a throng of people to cross some streets, and use underground pedestrian walkways to cross others.

I got the keen sense that we had not only traveled to a new land, but had also traveled back in time. There was a very 1950s feel about 1990s Beijing.

The subsequent days were full of misadventures. We took a Chinese tour bus for a day trip — even though no one on the bus spoke English, and none of us spoke Mandarin. I passed out from dehydration while climbing the Great Wall in the nearly 100 degree heat. And my father argued with a cab driver who didn’t start the meter on his taxi. It turns out the restaurant we were heading to was around the corner, and the taxi driver didn’t want to charge us what amounted to a 5 cent fare.

But ultimately, the strangest thing for me was posing for pictures with strangers. Many people in Beijing had not ever seen an American kid before. One by one, they asked my sister and I to pose for pictures with their children — some in broken English, others through the form of vehement gesturing that transcends language barriers. After a day of this, I felt like Mickey Mouse.

Beijing was an eye-opening experience for me. But there were plenty more surprises to come.

I have no idea what the typical tourist trail was in China in 1998, but I imagine it would include visits to Beijing, Shanghai and the Great Wall.

Our itinerary was different, for two main reasons.

First, we were obliged to travel to Inner Mongolia to meet our Chinese sister’s family.

Second, we had all grown fond of the Sesame Street movie Big Bird In China, in which the iconic bird with the obnoxious voice travels off the beaten path to explore China’s hidden beauty.

So, with these objectives in mind, we broke from the standard tourist script. Instead of boarding a flight to Shanghai, we took an overnight train to Inner Mongolia’s capital, Hohhot.

Hohhot was a prairie outpost compared to Beijing. Yet, in a nation of more than a billion people, even the smaller cities loomed large. Broad boulevards stretched for miles on end, the bike lanes as wide as the main lanes. And apartment buildings stretched as far as the eye could see.

Our Chinese sister’s parents lived in a modest apartment 15 minutes from the center of town. The apartment’s bathroom didn’t have a dedicated shower in the bathroom — just a shower head near the ceiling and a drain in the floor. So, we had to plan out when we were washing up, and when we were taking care of other business.

Sometimes, neither option was available. There were rolling power and water outages; electricity and water pressure were rarely functioning at the same time.

Some of these outages might have come from Hohhot’s daily afternoon thunderstorms, but I believe poor infrastructure played a role as well. After all, the preferred way to remove garbage in Hohhot was to put it in a neighbor’s backyard. That neighbor would then move it to another neighbor’s yard, and so on.

Behind the apartment, contractors worked day and night to build a massive new complex. In the week we were in Hohhot, these workers completed an entire floor. This amount of progress would be seemingly unthinkable back in the U.S., where construction projects seemed to languish for months in the 1990s.

Aside from these tidbits, my most vivid memory from our time in Inner Mongolia was our trip to the grasslands. We took a two-hour car ride into the most remote scenery I’ve ever encountered. Rolling, grassy pastures stretched out to the horizon in every direction, and there was nary a tree in sight. Puffy clouds dropped small shadows on parts of the landscape. Shadows that danced and drifted as the clouds moved across the sky.

We set up in a Yurt — a fortified Mongolian tent with an open roof — and then went on a long horseback ride across the grasslands. Unfortunately, I got heatstroke on the ride, and had to return to the Yurt to recuperate. I slept for 12 hours, missing the spectacle that evening when my father got drunk on a potent barley liquor.

I had never seen my father drunk before, so I was quite confused when I woke up the next morning and noticed he was not acting like himself. My mother alternated between taking care of him and tending to me. I was still feeling the effects of dehydration, so the car ride back to Hohhot was harrowing. But once we got back to the city, we found our form in short order.

Just in time, too. We had a train to catch.

Our next stop on our China tour was Datong. Home to iconic attractions, such as a cave filled with chiseled Buddha statues and a monastery suspended from a cliff, Datong was nonetheless the most backwater city we visited. The streets were barren of the shopping malls I’d seen in Beijing and Hohhot. There weren’t many restaurants. And our hotel was horrid.

Datong was very much a coal town. Dump trucks would barrel by me on the street, covering me in soot. It also seemed quite poor. Homeless people wearing soiled rags begged for change outside the train station, and some of the homeless were women with young children. I had never seen this level of poverty before. It was jarring.

After a few days in Datong, we took an overnight train to Xian. Home to the Terra Cotta warriors — a massive phalanx of porcelain soldiers an ancient emperor commissioned to protect him in the afterlife — Xian was the place where I discovered the phenomenon that is KFC in China. We paid the Colonel a visit so my sister and I could get a taste of home. But we quickly learned that finding a seat in the restaurant would be a difficult proposition. It was strange to see a fast-food joint so packed, but it was also refreshing to see how there was some food the Chinese and I both enjoyed.

Upon leaving Xian, we flew to Guilin in the southern part of the country. Guilin was perched along the winding Li River, surrounded by rice paddies in the shadow of scenic mountains with rounded tops. Big Bird had once visited this area. Now, we were seeing it with our own eyes.

As we cruised in a boat down the Li River to the village of Yangshao, I couldn’t help but think that the scenery was even more beautiful in person than it was on a VHS tape. For the first time in three weeks of travels, I felt comfortable and relaxed in the Far East.

Those happy vibes went away by dinnertime, however. As we sat at a sidewalk restaurant in Yangshao, I noticed that dog and snake were on the menu. I thought it might have been a bad translation to English at first. But then I noticed a caricature of a snake next to the snake dish, and a picture of Snoopy next to the dog item. This was no accident.

I had heard before that people in other countries eat dogs, but seeing it listed on the menu still rattled me. Frankly, it still does today.

Yet, aside from that issue, Guilin and Yangshao were among the more memorable segments of the trip for me. It was the point in the journey where I finally found some inner peace.

The final stop in our journey was Hong Kong. It was refreshing to hear English again, and to see a modern skyline. The weather was hot and steamy, but the city was picturesque, with skyscrapers and a mountain peak rising up from the harbor.

Since the elevation on Hong Kong Island changed so drastically, many people took a series of outdoor escalators from the high-rise apartments up the mountain to the Central Business District. We were staying in our Chinese sister’s apartment on the mountainside, so we rode the escalators right along with the natives when we went sightseeing.

Our time in Hong Kong was jam-packed with activities. We took a speedboat to the then-Portuguese colony of Macau for a day, had dinner on a floating restaurant on a boat anchored offshore, and made an ill-fated trip to an amusement park on a 102 degree day, among other things. All in all, it was the perfect way to end the trip.

As we took the long train ride back to the Hong Kong airport, I was filled with dread. I had come to enjoy my time in China, and was not looking forward to 18 more hours on a plane. Truthfully, I was no longer sure what was real and what was not anymore. Did my life before our trip to China exist? Or was it a figment of my imagination?

After a short flight to Seoul and a much longer flight to New York, I was back in America. The humid summer night air felt hauntingly familiar, everything looked the same as it did before we left. The skyline, the cars, our house, they were all the same as it had been a month before. If not for the pile of New York Times sports sections I’d asked my grandparents to collect for me while I was gone, there would be no sign I’d even left.

I was elated, overwhelmed and confused. I broke down and cried.

I have traveled abroad plenty in the years since our China trip, although I haven’t had my passport stamped for more than a decade now.

I’ve been to Europe and the Middle East. I’ve been to three countries in South America. And I’ve crossed the border to Canada and Mexico.

Yet, I have not returned to the Far East since that seminal journey in 1998.

I know China is far a different place now than it was then. South Korea and Japan, as well. Heading to Asia now would be an entirely different journey than it was before.

Maybe that’s why I have little desire to go.

You see, the trip to China impacted me in ways I can’t fully explain.

I recognized that the moment I came back home and started sobbing. The world hadn’t changed, but my understanding of it certainly had.

Despite all my anxiety about traveling, despite my refusal to eat many of the strange meals , despite my bouts with heatstroke and dehydration, the experience had been invaluable.

Seeing a starkly different place — one filled with poverty, polluted with coal dust and saddled with poor infrastructure — made me recognize just how fortunate I was to enjoy the trappings of American life. Even if those trappings were a blue sky overhead and an electric grid that worked 24-7.

The China of today isn’t saddled with many of the issues it once was. So my experience was as much one of time as it was of place.

I am keenly aware of this fact. And I am appreciative of the time I spent on the other side of the Pacific.

I wouldn’t have done what my parents did. If I were a parent in the 1990s, I wouldn’t have taken my kids to China for their maiden international voyage.

But looking back, I sure am glad they did.