Unexpected (Part II)

Today is the day when I write about something I wouldn't expect of myself, which is quite a task because everything I think of immediately seems like something about which I would write normally (go figure). My topic for today, which I don't think I usually talk about, is my guilt. As you may or may not know, for the past two summers, I went to El Salvador for three weeks to a village, Cacahuatal, for community service. I had the time of my life. I loved the people, the language, the manual labor (well, not really, but it was good for my spoiled brat attitude), and just had a fantastic time while also, you know, helping them. But even though I call El Salvador a "life-changing" trip...

I don't know if it was. I don't live my everyday life differently. I collect donations to send there instead of somewhere here, but is that really better? I tried to get people to contribute to a scholarship fund for two students there, but I haven't done a very good job this summer of organizing events (though to my credit, I am organizing a yard sale for August 14th or 15th, proceeds to the scholarship). Will I ever go back? I don't make an effort at all really to keep up with my host family because writing letters there is difficult, I tell myself, and even those I can email/facebook, I don't have very much to say. I'm not very outgoing in Spanish, less so than people who know less of the language than I do, and I just feel rotten when I think about it. I tried to purge my room for this yard sale, which is semi-successful, and I want to do something socially useful with my life. But when I get an email in Spanish that is too difficult for me to understand, or when it's been a while since I got incensed about the injustices going on there, I just...forget about it. It's always there, but I can't actually make myself DO anything. And I hate it. I despise myself. I despise the excuses I make for myself. I despise the fact that I let people comfort me into thinking it's okay, but I do. And I won't change. I've always been like this, about many issues, and I probably will always be like this. I don't have enough discipline to change the parts of me I don't like, but then I hate living with them. It's a vicious cycle and I don't know how to get out of it. I don't think I can.

I'm not usually that hopeless or dark. So... a blog I didn't expect to write. There you go.

So People Died...What Else Is New?

Again, sorry for my lack of recent updates...I was on vacation. A poor excuse I know, especially since I have been back for a week. Honestly, though, nothing in the news seems particularly...new. Okay, so there are problems with health care reform. There have been for weeks. There are deaths in Iraq. There have been for years.

Wait...did I really just brush off death like I don't care about it? Because that would be awful...but it is what millions of Americans, including myself, do everyday when they see the same old headlines. You look on the New York Times web site, see "20 Die in Suicide Bombing in Russia," and don't feel like reading about why these particular 20 people died. I most certainly understand when people do not want to watch the news becuase it is too depressing--it is a coping mechanism, an emotional survival tactic. But is it really the right thing to do?

Now, before I get into the morality of this whole issue, about which I have a lot to say, you should know what actually did happen in Russia. Apparently, there has been a lot of rebel violence in Russia in recent weeks. This particular suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into a Nazran police station and blew it up. Don't know where Nazran is? Neither did I (it's the capital of Ingushetia), but people, just like you and me, live there. Innocent people. Policemen. Who are trying to protect the innocent people. But 20 of them died. According to the NY Times article, the president of Ingushetia is losing the support of his people for failing to stop the rebel violence. Just thought you should know. For the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/world/europe/18russia.html?_r=1&hp.

Back to morality. I feel like every so often I become involved in a discussion about depressing things and how people should deal with them. Is it cowardly to try to forget a tragedy? Is it selfish to ignore the sadness of others in an attempt to preserve your own happiness? Or is it simply stupid to let yourself get sidetracked by the deaths and sicknesses because they are a fact of a life? Most would answer no, no, and yes, to these questions, respectively. You can't get caught in the past, they say. You have to move on. So-and-so who died would want you to move on and be successful.

I can't help but wonder, though, if this is just an excuse that has been accepted over the years becuase no one feels like dealing with grief. Grief in your own life is harder to forget, but everyone moves on eventually. Grief in other people's lives is not only forgotten, but sometimes just ignored completely. The only evidence I have to the contrary is a fictional character from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. She was a character so compassionate that she could not let go of other people's tragedies and eventually resorted to suicide becuase they overwhelmed her.

That's obviously not the way most of us want to go.

So...what are we to do? Are there only two choices--grieve for a few days, maybe weeks, maybe less, and then move on versus never forget and then kill yourself? I like to think there is a middle ground. Don't just read an article and forget it. Read an article and discuss it with someone, think about it, write about it. Don't shy away from death just because it is far away from you (literally or figuratively). You'd never want someone to see your death in the paper and say "Oh, that's too depressing. Too bad, so sad."