Wednesday, April 25, 2012

New Eyes and Ears

Just as I had to adjust to living in Mali, I'm adjusting to living back in America. It's my first time coming back in 1 year and 9 1/2 months and not much has changed. More things have been accumulated and people have grown older, had kids and gained or lost weight, but overall, things are the same, but I've changed. I'm still processing the past two years and I'm processing the now. I think it will be a lot easier for me to share the things the I'm processing now, at the moment, but I will be reflecting on my last month so I can share that with you all soon.

 For now:

This morning, I woke up and listened to the sounds around me. There was the chirping of birds, the humming of the furnace and the refridgerator, the ticking of the clock and that's about it. When I was in Mali, every morning I'd wake up to the sound of kid goats hopping around, chickens clucking and roosters crowing, women beating millet, the radio, people getting water from the well, chatting, babies crying and donkeys braying.

What's the difference? There's much more life in Mali.

I took a walk this morning and made similar observations. Even though I was outside, I mostly heard machines rather than living beings. Where were the people? They were all in boxes. If you want to see other people in this world, you have to go inside these boxes (offices, schools, stores, cars etc.). As I continued walking, I saw a man coming towards me. Finally, "A person not inside of a box!", I thought. However, he had in headphones (no judgement here, because I'm a music freak and need it constantly in my life), and had created his own "box" to keep some distance. And I noticed that as he saw me, his eyes began to dart back and forth, as if he was looking for a place to hide. I think we've all done this. We don't like having to talk to strangers, but what makes us so uncomfortable to do so? In Mali, if you don't greet a stranger, you could be shamed by that person (I've been!). And now that I've been conditioned to speak to people, to show some humanity and I don't feel so awkward encountering someone I don't know.

Another observation I made is that of the two people that I encountered in my quarter-mile radius, elderly, retired, white men. This spoke a lot to me. I am happy to see that everyone goes to their little box to be successful or whatnot. It is a lot better than seeing young people wasting their potential over several glasses of hot tea when it's 115 degrees out, but why is it that Americans look forward to enjoying their lives once they retire? Why not now? There needs to be more of a balance between work and play. And play doesn't necessarily mean fluffing off responsibilities, but play can be used to hone our skills, our talents, contribute to the greater community and just be overall happier. Just think about how many dreams have been snuffed out, just because we want more money so we can buy more stuff? Lame.

As a society, I think we have set some serious limitations on ourselves. That is a much headier chain of thought, I won't go into that (maybe later), but I remember that one thing I tried to understand about Malians is, what is happiness for them? I feel like most of the people I met were generally happy, but with projections of Western Society shoved in their faces, I could tell that the youth are questioning their happiness.........and now, I've gotten completely lost in my thoughts.

So, if you're reading this, just take a moment to think about how you're living or how you want to live your life. We can all make this world a better place if we get out of our boxes and share.

No comments:

Post a Comment