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The verdict? It's not news to me. I remember stories of people who tried to leave Scientology finding rattlesnakes in their mailboxes almost 30 years ago. I'm unlikely fodder for the Scientologists, or Jim Jones, or even Heaven's Gate, the group that aspired to evacuate Earth with the Hale-Bopp comet (much as I do love air travel). For two hours tonight, I watched and listened to former Scientologists -- and these were high-ranking people, not the riff-raff -- describing years of abuse and paranoia and fiscal skullduggery. At the end, they asked themselves (and we, the viewers, asked the same of them), how did I get here? How could I have failed to see the warning signs?
I left the Flicks, a villa near the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and I pedalled through the dark streets of Phnom Penh on my bamboo bicycle. I stopped to wait for traffic at a busy intersection and noticed that the transgender Khmer singer at the beer garden to my right was delivering a fine rendition of "Stand by Me". A tuktuk driver to my left pointed to the singer and gave me a thumbs-up.
Click.
Is this where I imagined I would be thirty years ago? Is it what my parents, teachers, mentors, friends envisioned for me? No. Sometimes we end up in places and circumstances that we might not have predicted. They may be sinister, as Scientology seems to me to be, or they may just be bizarre, like Phnom Penh. We might be able to outline the steps that brought us to our current situation, but I expect the various forks in the road will seem mysterious. We chose this route or that one because it seemed the path of least resistance, or the lesser of two evils, or the path we actually discerned to be most sound.
I suppose people who followed more traditional paths must occasionally ask themselves the same questions, but perhaps with less sense of alarm. I've got the lyrics of the song, "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads ringing in my ears.
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself
Well...How did I get here?
A beautiful, contemplative, post, Amanda. I don't believe in fate or determinism but I know for certain I am glad our paths crossed and we became friends from the time we met on FB and I picked you up for Nicole's Halloween party back in 2011.
ReplyDeleteScientology is a funny thing. I don't think it's any more harmful than most organised religions. You have religious authorities who canonize a woman who had conned people of money and kept seriously ill individuals in a state of constant pain and suffering for years in order to convert them. You have religious leaders telling women they should not drive or laugh with their mouths open or go to cinemas or queue with men in grocery stores, and trainloads of men just eagerly waiting to enforce those rules with the use of force and violence. For every mystic barmpot out there, there are scores of gullible, unhappy people willing to put their faith in them and their theories of alien gods and fasting oneself to immortality and magical hummingbirds foretelling the births of Supreme Leaders.
Phnom Penh is as nice as any other city to be in, as far as i could tell. Of course, I'd much rather you be in KL but judging by the speed with which Malaysia is sliding backwards I may have to rethink that.
I don't know where I will be in 30 years, but looking back on my troubled teen years, I can safely say how pleased I am to be where I am now. I'm doing all the things I have always wanted to but wasn't able to afford in my youth -- volunteering, animal rescuing, sponsoring others, living on my own, being debt-free, etc. I'll just try to make the most of it while I can.
Looking forward to seeing you again in a few days.