9/11/2017 4 Comments the return Most days I find myself so withdrawn the only thing I can bring myself to do is gaze out my window, finding a way to escape empty conversations. It's become the most peaceful way I can handle it. I listen. I am quiet. I overhear the chatter that is there just to fill up space rather than to say something.
Even hitchhiking across Myanmar with a broken phone, little to no idea where I was headed apart from “East to Kalaw”, 20 cents in my pocket, no food in my belly, and zero knowledge of the language has left me excruciatingly lost in the ways I feel now. There are days where the only thing I can do is cry. I feel guilty for being sad. Most of all, I can't identify to myself when I'm aching this way. Hurting just doesn’t feel like me. My natural state of being is more along the lines of jumping for joy and squealing out of delight, dancing, making up silly songs to sing at the top of my lungs, laughing until my belly hurts. I am eager and giddy and constantly in awe. I'm the sister who chases her brothers around the house shaking my booty at them until they are cry-laughing. Making a clown out of myself is, in fact, my specialty. (Well, Joy is quite my specialty. Get this: I even took on this nickname by different people throughout India who had to relation to each other. Most friends call me Jo. A handful of individuals I met called me joy. Never had this happened in my life. But for two months, I was referred to as a synonym for happiness. Simply enchanting.) Since my return home I don't feel like I used to. My feet aren’t on the ground. I feel dishearteningly disoriented; something comparable to walking upside down. Everything is the same, but appears wildly distorted. Things that were easy before feel strangely difficult. Driving my car, eating a meal, taking out the trash, and speaking are exhausting as thoughts of consumerism, fake food, commercialism, nationalism, and connection fills my mind. I can’t remember a time I’ve been more conscious of the impact (social, economical, environmental, as a big sister, and everything in between) I make by simply existing. I think the hardest thing that is to accept about life here is the lack of mindfulness. The very breath we take goes unnoticed and I’m gasping for air. But I’m here, and I learn every single day. This type of learning isn’t always pleasant. It’s sucked. It’s been real ugly. But i’m trying to accept this as part of life, too. Vital parts of the person I loved in myself have been slipping right through my fingers. It’s frightening how quickly the layers of myself I thought I shed off are sneakily making their way back; I'm afraid I'll fall into my old habits, that I will lose the person who I worked so hard to become. I fear going backwards. ☼ I often have flashbacks of my days spent in Asia. Daniel (the friend I was traveling with) and I were in Agra, India, waiting for a cooler time of day to go visit the Taj Mahal with time to kill. We went to go take a look at what was around these well-kept roads and fancy cafes that surrounded the Taj. We wandered. Just a street away from the clean streets were slums. Hills of garbage. Children using the bathroom in the street. Hungry, yet smiling people. I tried not to think about it too much for my own selfish reasons. I wanted to remain completely oblivious to the poverty that was happening just outside of a world heritage site which rolled in thousands a day. I didn't want to feel guilty for the money I was about to spend. We went to work on some projects as we waited for the day to cool down; journaling and photography. We ate. I tried keeping thoughts about the amount of money I had in my bank account, and how many families I could have feed instead of spending it on my own selfish desires in the back of my head. I was disgusted at my privilege. Only my luck allowed me to be born in the USA, where I could easily make money, get a passport and afford to travel the world. I locked these thoughts up in the back of my mind so they wouldn’t disrupt my plans for the day. I just wanted to eat and enjoy myself in peace. Not long after I had these thoughts securely locked away, I saw two little boys around 5 and 6 years old rummaging through the rubbish just outside the cafe, collecting plastic bottles to make a couple rupees. I thought of my youngest brothers, 4 and 9 years old. They weren’t going through garbage to find bottles to get money to be fed. I thought of the way they had a cozy, warm bed to sleep in every night. Clean drinking water. A warm shower. Toys. They could never comprehend what it’s like not to have a fridge filled with food. How could they even fathom something like having to earn money for themselves in order to fill up a hungry stomach? Can I even describe the pain of a big sister in this situation? Equal waves of relief and pain crashing into my heart. I’m thankful my brothers don’t have to struggle with the basics of survival, and equal parts disgusted that this all exists. Poverty. There is nothing is fair about some people having food, and others not. It’s just not fair. ☼ There’s a lot I don’t understand, but there is so much more I can’t wrap my head around as I’ve returned back to my own country. I know- I shouldn’t feel ‘guilty’ in the ways that I do for coming from a country that just happens to dictate my ability to travel the world. Or to make a lot of money. Or whatever. It was not my choice. And I speak about these boys to reflect on the idea of poverty. It is not pity that I’m asking for. It is a reminder of the diversity of daily struggle that goes on all over the world. It is important for us to remember the only thing which separates ourselves from poverty to privilege is pure circumstance. We are no better. And we are no worse. We are only just people. More than anything, my time in Asia taught me what richness really is. It’s kindness. Hospitality. The peace that lives in us. The appreciation for all things. Love. It’s helping a solo hitchhiker on the road with 20 cents in her pocket, a broken phone, an inability to speak the language of the country she is traveling in, little to no idea where she is going to a destination 8 hours away, and still giving her food, supplying her with water, getting her where she needs to go, and asking nothing in return. That her was me. It may sound naive what I did, but adventure was waiting. People try things they’ve never done all the time. And when I thought I may be sleeping in a field or outside of a pagoda, I was met with richness instead. I have been taught again and again that you can have so ‘little’ yet so much, The same way the way we have so MUCH yet emotionally so little. This man did not make a lot, and my mind automatically thought “How can I accept such an offer when I have nothing to give to him” He taught me I had everything to offer. This is exactly the problem I see here, We are so money-driven that we forget we can give the gift of deep and meaningful human connection. Do you get what I’m trying to say here? I see us striving for fancier cars, and nicer shoes, and more equipment, and more luxurious houses. That’s all fine. Buy your shoes and your cars. But what hurts is this: we fail to recognize our overwhelming abundance. Privilege that isn’t recognized. We have food and a place to sleep, but we are ignoring the basics of what being a human is: connection to one another. I see loneliness. Fear. The inability to trust. I wish we could live in a world where ego doesn’t rule and we’re too busy loving and helping each other to worry about what we may get in return. I listen to the patterns of conversations; the ones that seem to revolve around other people stained with judgement and the tarnished with the inability to listen. I can’t help but notice the way we all seem to be waiting for our chance to speak rather than listening to each other's woes and passions. Too busy thinking of another way we can show how much we know rather than take time to care about who is sitting right next to us. Too occupied thinking ‘busy’ means ‘successful’. I've seen the tendency in people to just speak louder when they feel they aren't being heard or to assert their dominance, and in some weird way, seek respect. There are too many gatherings to count that have involved only looking at screens rather than each other. I can't understand what the intentional focus on negativity is all about. How is this gossip a thing when there is so much more we could be speaking about? What is its root? How about the obsession over self and our image? How do we make scrolling through instagram and Facebook more of a priority than spending time with our friends, or kids, or our parents? What about the hurry we always seem to be in. Where is there time to be mindful when we’re frantically going from one place to another? Why don't we eat with each other? The overabundance we live in. Looking in a full fridge and saying "there's nothing to eat"- Can we, for just a moment, understand how much we have? How lucky we are to have what we do? I’ve explored the idea of gossip, of loudness, and stating our big juicy opinions all over the place as a means to fill ourselves. Opinions are the only thing we have control over when we feel life is controlling us, perhaps. Even when they’re over the most ridiculous, shallow topics like how people are dressed, and which makeup she uses, and what kind of job he has now. Are we unhappy with the lives we’re living we’re engaging in gossip over anything we can get our mouths to mutter? Why are we out of touch with our own passions, and so unsatisfied with our lives that we’re using this as a means to fill us? PLEASE. Diminishing the lives and successes to make us feel good? I’ve never heard of something more wrong. Either out of insecurity or boredom; it’s not kind and it’s certainly not necessary. Everything seems backwards. ☼ Unfortunately I don't have the magical cure to all things wrong in the world. But, I like to think the cure is in ourselves. Perhaps we could try doing small things that bring us great joy? What if we got a bit more in touch with the things and people we love. What are your DREAMS? What if we just ate together at the dinner table. Rang up an old friend. Wrote a letter. Watched the sunset. Read a book. Who do you love that you have not told? Are we grateful for our warm shower, and our clothes, and warm hugs? When was the last time you someone you appreciated them? What if we trusted a little more. Listened a little closer. Noticed smell of the flowers and the way the leaves change? Above all: are we grateful? Maybe we could live with little more mindfulness. A little more joy. And a hell of a lot more love.
4 Comments
Lizzie
9/12/2017 06:58:50 pm
Poignant. Insightful. Authentic.
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Lael LeBlanc Sr.
9/13/2017 09:20:39 am
Wow! Johanna, I'm so proud of you! I am intimately acquainted with these feelings. It's really hard to be normal again once you have experienced compassion for others who have so much less. I have learned a lot about contentment and gratitude on my journeys as well. Blessings.
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10/9/2017 02:23:41 pm
Hello Johanna! My intern sent me this blogpost as part of an ongoing conversation we have about privilege and the relational nature of difference. I was moved by your thoughts and was reminded to my youth. My early travels took me to Kenya and Tanzania and when I came "home" to the states I felt much the way you do. I wanted to encourage you to know you are not alone. I wanted to send you some wisdom from our elders to lean on. bell hooks says "The Practice of LOVE is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination." Alice Walker says, “The world is as beautiful as it ever was. It is changing, but then it always has been. This is a good time to change, and remain beautiful, with it.” And Walker wrote a short book called "Over coming speechlessness" on her travels and studies of some of humanity's great recent tragedies. It may keep you good company through this journey. Godspeed, fellow traveler.
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thuzar
11/3/2017 05:37:01 pm
Dearest beautiful soul,
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