This month's Encounter is with 9 to 5'er artist, Paint Chantranuluck. Panit is originally from Thailand and she is an actress, singer, and flight attendant. For her Encounter, Panit blends her passions for singing and travel by sharing a montage of songs performed in the different destinations that she has visited as a flight attendant. If you would like to learn more about Panit and her passion for the performing arts, I encourage you to check out her story on The Characters page of this website. I have also included a brief written story of my Encounter with Panit below.

And now, without further ado, I present to you our Encounter with Panit. Enjoy! (P.S. If you would like to skip my intro, Panit's story begins at 03:05 and her artistic Encounter begins at 05:01)

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How do you see this world that we live in?

Until recently, I used to believe that there was only one “correct” way to see the world. That perception of life and this shared reality was clearly written down by Society, guided by pragmatism and science. This belief caused me some internal struggle because my mind wanted so much to accept Society’s guidebook but, by its nature, it could not. One of my mind’s favorites to question was the concept of reality. My mind wandered through ideas about the self in relation to the outside world, the relationship between cerebral and physical, and individual versus shared perspective; a nebulous landscape, which to this day, I am still quite unable to make sense of. These thoughts made me feel that I was straying from the guidebook that I believed everyone else was following and therefore, I needed to “correct” my mind fast.

But then, Encounters happened, and it gave me insight more than ever before into the beauty and complexity of the human character.

From the stories of the 9 to 5’er artists that I featured, I came to realize that our reality is naturally fragmented. It is broken into millions and millions of pieces, each piece unique to each individual. Life, this shared experience, is interpreted differently by each piece; a dancer may experience it through touch, a musician through sound, a painter through sight. Listening to a speech, some may pay attention to the actual words, others to the musicality of its diction, others to the intention behind them, and for some, maybe it’s simply the breath?

Encounters showed me the endless possibilities of how we can see this world.

Each of us does live in our own reality to an extent; who we are as individuals forms our perception of this shared world that we live in.

And to me, that is why art exists. Art enables us to show the world as we see it and consequently, create new worlds by combining our perspectives.

Panit is the second to last 9 to 5’er artist who I am featuring before the conclusion of the Encounters story. I wanted Panit to share her story near the end of Encounters’ final chapter because I think that her Encounter perfectly captures this idea of perspective.

As a flight attendant, Panit has traveled the world and encountered so many different cultures. Travel opens our minds and shows us how life is interpreted differently depending on where you live. Our values, our perspectives are shaped so heavily by the terrain in which we live. In the man-made concrete jungle of New York City filled with 8.6 million people (and millions more tourists), efficiency and speed are what is valued by its inhabitants. In the Mediterranean, where the sun heavily beats down in the middle of the day during the summer months, life is rearranged and the towns and small cities take a pause. Businesses close, people take siestas or mesimeris, and come out at night to continue the hustle and bustle of their lives. Here, the people respect and value nature because they have a closer connection to it than those from the man-made jungle of NYC.

Although we may look at life differently depending on where we are from, Panit lays down a common thread connecting all of the different places in this world, through song. As seen in her Encounter, Panit finds connection to the places that she visits through her passion for music. Each different piece of the globe inspires a different song. Working as cabin crew, Panit’s perspective is constantly changing, whether it’s being in Tokyo or England or at 41,000 ft. elevation in the sky, but it is the music that is her continuous reality, her “home”.

Panit is an artist and performer who I have always been inspired by because her love for the performing arts is so honest and pure that it’s transcendent and consequently, uplifts those around her. Now, with all the different perspectives that Panit has encountered through her travels, I can only imagine that her art will grow, evolve, and resonate with even more people, unknowingly sculpted by the millions of pieces around the world that make up this shared reality.