Everyday Magic: July 2010

11 july 2010

I never knew just how effortless dishwashers made the chore of cleaning up after a meal.

I never realized just how quickly microwaves zap our food into boiling bubbles.

I couldn't begin to fathom the manual effort required to transport water.

I didn't see just how generally washing machines rinse our clothes with little attention to the real grass or sweat stain spots.

I didn't understand the pain of going to sleep on an empty stomach.

I'd never experienced an unquenchable thirst.

Being a white, middle class, young, American woman, my life lacked anything to call first-hand racial prejudice.

I didn't know what it meant to be white, what it meant to be privileged.

I'd heard my parents respond to our selfish cries of child-(and admittedly even adolescence and young adult)-hood hundreds of times "there are children around the world who don't have any toys/money/food; who don't go to the doctors/the movies/the store/on vacation - I want! I want! I want!! - you are so spoiled and you don't even understand."

I didn't understand.

And while my 7 month long stay in Rwanda could never fully erase the gifted, fortunate circumstances I have been born into - to allow me to completely immerse my entire being into the hearts/minds/stomachs of poverty stricken children around the world, I now find myself wandering the paved, 4 wheel-drive congested roads of American suburbia once again - carrying not only the reminders of Rwandan children who have forever touched my life, but also a new set of lenses through which I now see and experience the world.

I'm hesitant to call my journey in and through Peace Corps a "journey". I feel that this noun is all too cliche, all too overused to describe a soul-searching experience one might set out on as a recent college graduate, not exactly sure what type of career, outside of teaching, one may possibly pursue with a liberal arts degree. "Journey", "soul searching" - they're both very cliche, but unfortunately they're both very right. For me though, Peace Corps was not only an all-too-short-lived, post-college experience, (when my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 peritoneal cancer this past May, I realized that those who truly needed me most were the loved ones I'd uncertainly kissed goodbye only 7 months before) but it was also, what I saw as my be all and end all. Peace Corps, my dream of serving as a PCV, pulled me through the long, dark days, weeks, months of winter seasonal depression my senior year at Michigan State. Peace Corps would bring me clarity to the "what's next? what's my purpose? what am I meant to be and do with my life?" questions that all too often overwhelmed my mind and heart, a mind and heart hardly capable of grasping the ideas of self-respect and the what-should-be-obvious boundaries between healthy and unhealthy relationships. If I couldn't even get things figured out in my personal life, how was I meant to do such a thing contemplating my Purpose - on such a much larger, more important scale?

I had so many questions,

Peace Corps would surly guide me to the answers.

Or so I thought.

Now, returning home to America two years before I'd ever expected, I find that not only has Peace Corps failed to give me clearly defined relationship standards or point me down a direct path to my calling, but it's has stirred up even MORE questions, some personal, some questions I'd like to pose to the world. Questions to which I'm afraid the answers can only and will only be found simply through the act of living, doing, and learning.

What is happiness?

What is the deepest way to inspire and educate others?

Why do we allow ourselves, our lives, our relationships to be driven by the never-ending cycle of consumerism?

What will it take for this world to realize and act upon the importance of gender equality and the education of girls and women?

Isn't it sometimes true that less is really more?

How can we humble ourselves to see that we are not alone in so many of the fights we combat throughout our lives - and to realize the enormous strength we could procure if only we took them on together rather than as lone soldiers?

I am a question person, and it is my hope that by sharing my Rwandan stories, that I will ignite a curiosity within the hearts and minds of other Americans. It is my hope that these tales of mistakes, fears and insecurities, adventures, will inspire individuals to consider perhaps adapting a new perspective on their own journeys through this life - to help them find their own way of "living the answers."