The Lesson from a Myanmar Village Chief
Perched in a jumble of shacks along a ridge…
the village rambled left and right. Children ran along a track which bisected the village along the ridge line, their giggles and the wind mingling in the trees. An ambling pig with grey, tattered hair kicked up pockets of dust in the still air.
As we approached one of the larger shacks, the village chief came out, dressed simply in dark pants and a thick brown coat. He was probably in his sixties, lean, and looked like decades back he’d been strong and wiry enough to build half the houses over which he now presided. He invited us in for tea, our guide translating. We accepted instinctively, knowing that not even a glance between us was needed to choose that travelers’ fork in the road. We were each wearing a pair of those low-ankle hiking shoes that for some reason are always the absolute least fashionable item in my wardrobe (and believe me I own some hideous clothes). We left them at the bottom of a steep wooden stairway that separated the house from the red, muddy dirt.
We were traveling in rural Myanmar, a land of unpretentious beauty. Gilded pagodas thrust out from the deep green forested hills, monks meditating at their bases. These hills are steeped in a history longer than we can imagine. It is said that the ancient tradition of Vipassana meditation, practiced by the Buddha himself, was sent to Burma back then and stewarded faithfully for almost two millennia, unchanging while empires rose and fell, before returning to India and spreading worldwide.
We gathered upstairs on wooden stools, while an older woman served tea. The chief was friendly and confident, engaging us in conversation. As for the others assembled, some sat with us, while others ventured stolen glances from the shadows, not hostile, nor obviously friendly, perhaps suspicious or more likely shy.
After the familiar exchange of gratitude, compliments, and so on, the chief turned the conversation to us. He stood out for his curiosity about the world beyond his own. I deeply admire this trait, particularly in one who lacks the educational opportunities to nurture it. He asked where we had come from. We answered truthfully, but imbuing real meaning into our words was challenging. This man was a village chief, no doubt possessing deep knowledge of many things including how to lead his agricultural community wisely, but his familiarity with planetary scale was understandably lacking. Did we know the other white people who had come through earlier this year? He was surprised to learn that we might not even speak the same language as them. We said we had traveled to this country on a plane, gesturing to the sky. A chorus of approving understanding rippled around the group - they had all see the jets fly over.
The conversation continued. He knew that the world is round (thankfully the flat-earther movement had not reached this village), and so he asked us how this works - do we use the same sun as they do, or is there a different one on the other side of the world? Cautiously trying to avoid a patronizing tone, we explained what Copernicus had told the world five centuries earlier. He listened with rapt approval, pausing us to ask clarifying questions. After a time, he fell silent and his gaze rested in the middle distance, mulling our words, visualizing the planets, puzzle pieces clicking into place. A quiet, satisfied acceptance then resolved itself through the weathered lines on his face. He clearly understood, and was grateful -- not so much to us, but through us to gratitude for the elegance of the cosmos itself.
Weightier topics resolved, our guide and the chief chatted casually and without translation. They were catching up on the latest news between villages - harvests, deaths, marriages, and so on. Our guide’s news and gossip seemed almost like a commodity, but not one to be traded, only shared freely. I smiled contentedly as we were, at least for a time, given the gift of receding into the background. As we sat in quiet half-observation, wanting neither to seem too interested nor too disinterested, the pleasant tones of the local dialect flowed by us like a gentle summer stream. I idly looked outside, and saw a puppy trotting over from inside the house. It continued on its way, tracking some scent or other, just as we would trace the path of a bird passing overhead.
Clambering back down, we discovered that one of Roxy’s shoes was now carrying a dark stain and an unpleasant smell. As we hiked away from the village, the conversation turned from speculation as to the provenance of said odor (dog? pig? cat?) to the chief. We had both had the same profound reaction. Visualize peering down from a clifftop of giddying heights of knowledge. Imagine the imperial satisfaction of being the one who imparts what is True. And now, turn around, and crane your neck upwards to see that your supposedly elevated vantage point is a mere pebble next to the foot of a leviathan of rock towering above you. That is us. We think we know so much, but in the scheme of everything there is to know about reality, we are the village chief.
We savored the irony of learning such a visceral lesson in humility from someone who in a certain way knew so little. The experience of teaching him had come to us naturally - perhaps too naturally. We felt a sense of something ugly inside. Was it shame at our arrogance, perhaps? The shame that in our society we abuse our supposedly superior knowledge of science to deplete nature, unlike in rural Myanmar where they live in relative harmony with the land. And it was much later that we realized the real lesson. This man had the confidence to admit what he did not know, not in private but in full earshot of those whom he led. Through his willingness to put his ego aside, he could learn. We’ll never know whether he knew that he had more to teach us about leadership than we had to teach him about physics. And it raised a deeper question too: can we ever find true humility? If we could, we would always be open to what we can learn from anyone or anything, rather than instinctively leaning to what we can teach.
Photo by Pixabay
For now, we walked on through the mist of the hills and our ignorance. The pungent smell of urine washed out soon enough, but the stain on the shoe remains today, there to remind us of the lesson of the village chief.