Easter in Bangkok and Not Allowing “Should” to Ruin “Is”

This will be our fourth family Easter spent overseas, our third in a Buddhist country. Our two trips taking the girls to Japan while my brother and his family lived there both coincided with the spring festivities. Last year we were in Geneva, the Europe part of our trip around the world. We even dyed so many eggs last year we were sick of hard boiled eggs by the time we caught a train for Venice. The stores were filled with chocolate bunnies and eggs and chicks. Swiss chocolate, no less, some of the best in the world; not that waxy American stuff.

Today, we painted some duck and quail eggs with Hannah’s acrylic paints. All the chicken eggs we found were brown, the duck and the little spotted quail eggs are the whitest. There were no egg dying kits available at the Tops Market down the street here in Bangkok. No chocolate bunnies here, either, although we found some good Swiss and Belgian chocolates. Tomorrow morning I’ll find some bowls to put the candy bars I found in, along with the eggs we painted today: Easter baskets for the girls. Then I’ll hide the painted eggs, counting them to make sure we don’t leave any stinky surprises for the owner of the apartment, and the girls will get competitive with each other while they search, as always.

I suppose it’s another example of how life is much happier once you let go of the idea of “should.” Little can teach us this like travel: lessons in flexibility and improvising. In letting go of the expectation- laden image of how things “ought to” be and not allowing that vision to ruin the experience of what “is.”