I interviewed for a summer job today. At 9:40am. I was one minute late. It involves a ton of writing, updating, summarizing, taking pictures — in short, working for a travel guide. I think it went well. I pray that it went well. Ever since I can remember, I have remembered places…not just places, but specific sites. I remember the round-about in downtown Owerri, next to the public library and the bus stop, which was one of the most major places in the city. I remember Canal Street in New York City, but specifically the shop that I went in and bought a scarf for quite cheap. I remember sitting in Central Park, watching dancers from around protest a genocide through their art. I remember the church on Wetheral Road, the Catholic one that had beautiful stained glass windows and a bi-annual bazaar outside. And yet, I’m frustrated. Or tired…perhaps both.
I have tried so hard to gain an international experience, but I don’t think that the powers that be recognize nor appreciate the simple but desperate wish to immerse yourself in another culture, to learn the language, and to engage the people: to take the time to process the last few years of your life before moving on to another stage and a new experience. These formative experiences don’t have to be painful and tortuous — most people who are saving the world in a big and glorious way only smile when the camera is on. That was unfair…I’m sorry. But what I mean to say is that ministries don’t have to be miraculous to be impacting — we can find meaning in the small things, and we can impact people on our patches of green earth. But we need to get away sometimes, a distancing in order to look back on our lives and process it from a different reference point. What I don’t understand is why sometimes people feel that getting away is unjustified if it’s not doing something major and huge. Don’t get me wrong. There is a time and a need for intrepid citizens to embark upon a trek through southern China to teach women how to market their jewelry in order to better their existences. There’s also merit in traveling to India to visit among the urban poor in an attempt to radically effect change, whether through redesigning the urban slums or working with a non-profit to teach women to start bank accounts to gain financial security from the men in their lives. But I think there’s also merit in instilling the behavioral disposition towards accepting others who look, think, achieve, and believe differently than you do, and those sorts of lessons take place in city buses, churches, synagogues, and mosques, concerts where you’re waving your hands to a greater theme, or just sharing dreams about a better reality. These encounters aren’t always on the big, well-marked paths — they’re often accidental meetings with strangers on small and quiet paths.
I want these “well-met by moonlight” experiences. I want to write about sites of memory, identity, authorship, local food, that breathtaking view of the city in a month and a day that I will never again experience in that way because the moment, though treasured forever and captured to memory, will never return again. I want to feel joyful and sad at the same time — ecstatic that I got to experience the moment, while sad that life and time are fleeting. I need to process the last four years of my life. And I strongly believe that it would do me a world of good to travel outside of the United States to do this. I really don’t want to save the world, or at least, that’s not why I want to go abroad, which is to say, not right this summer.
I love when I’m pleasantly surprised. I’ll let you know. I really want this. It’s a beautiful day today.
