Elsewhere
Sometimes, I find myself trying to figure out how to save the world. I don't do it as much as I used to, but occasionally my mind begins to contemplate the plight of the politically oppressed in Myanmar, sex workers in the Philippines, struggling indigenous people in the Amazon rain forest, the dispossessed in Darfur. What these groups of people share--besides very real problems in need of very real and complex solutions--is distance from me. And I've learned over the years that when it comes to saving others, distance makes the heart grow more compassionate.
At various difficult times in my life, I've fantasized about leaving it all and traveling to some far and troubled place. It would be someplace perpetually warm and humid, and of course the people there would speak another language--preferably difficult and obscure; I'd learn it in no time and gain their trust. I'd throw myself into caring for the people, and the lack of modern cultural distractions would allow me to work on my writing, which I would publish, which would bring me acclaim, and which would allow me to return home in triumph. I never really thought about what would happen to the people I had been caring for at that point; more importantly, my own rehabilitation and redemption would be complete.
Why that fantasy has appealed to me all these years, I can't say for certain. But I know that part of it involves the appeal of distance. I can look at the problems of people in that faraway place because I can feel very certain that the problems aren't really mine. I don't belong to that society, so I didn't create them. They have arisen from that place's history or political leadership or something else beyond my control. And because I have no stake in the problem, my willingness to deal with it makes me all the more self-sacrificing.
Facing suffering close to home, though, differs quite a bit from dealing with suffering elsewhere. Images of large eyes and gaunt faces pull at my heart when they're on the television. But the flesh and blood gaunt faces at the stoplight on the way to work, the thin hands holding up hand-scrawled signs on dirty cardboard, those I don't want to see. They can make eye contact with me. They are only a car window's thickness away, too close for comfort.
Unlike the sufferers elsewhere, I know these local people. I've seen them before. I live--and flourish--in the same communal space where they struggle. These are my neighbors; these are my poor. The kids on the southside of town going to overcrowded schools are my children; the teens getting into trouble are mine; the old who can't get from one side of the city to the other because of poor mass transit are my elders. They make me think about the precariousness of my life here, how easily I might lose the things and people I have. They make me wonder about the rules and circumstances of this place where I live.
Of course, I feel uncomfortable asking those questions. And to keep that discomfort at bay, I prefer to think of this place where I live as basically just, of success as basically available to anyone here. This lets me believe that whatever I have, I deserve; I've earned it. In other words, seeing Here as the just and fortunate place and There as the sad, oppressed place obscures the reality and people of both places. It becomes easier for me to ignore what I might be doing to make this place where I live better.
I don't mean at all that I shouldn't care about what happens on the other side of the world. I should do what I can to support the people and organizations that try to make a difference there, and I should educate myself so that I know one Elsewhere from another, so that I distinguish between Kenya and the Congo, between Honduras and El Salvador, between Malaysia and Myanmar.
But saving Elsewhere doesn't absolve me from facing the pain around me, in my city, in my neighborhood. The pain that I own, or should own. If I want to save people, there are plenty just outside my own front door.
At various difficult times in my life, I've fantasized about leaving it all and traveling to some far and troubled place. It would be someplace perpetually warm and humid, and of course the people there would speak another language--preferably difficult and obscure; I'd learn it in no time and gain their trust. I'd throw myself into caring for the people, and the lack of modern cultural distractions would allow me to work on my writing, which I would publish, which would bring me acclaim, and which would allow me to return home in triumph. I never really thought about what would happen to the people I had been caring for at that point; more importantly, my own rehabilitation and redemption would be complete.
Why that fantasy has appealed to me all these years, I can't say for certain. But I know that part of it involves the appeal of distance. I can look at the problems of people in that faraway place because I can feel very certain that the problems aren't really mine. I don't belong to that society, so I didn't create them. They have arisen from that place's history or political leadership or something else beyond my control. And because I have no stake in the problem, my willingness to deal with it makes me all the more self-sacrificing.
Facing suffering close to home, though, differs quite a bit from dealing with suffering elsewhere. Images of large eyes and gaunt faces pull at my heart when they're on the television. But the flesh and blood gaunt faces at the stoplight on the way to work, the thin hands holding up hand-scrawled signs on dirty cardboard, those I don't want to see. They can make eye contact with me. They are only a car window's thickness away, too close for comfort.
Unlike the sufferers elsewhere, I know these local people. I've seen them before. I live--and flourish--in the same communal space where they struggle. These are my neighbors; these are my poor. The kids on the southside of town going to overcrowded schools are my children; the teens getting into trouble are mine; the old who can't get from one side of the city to the other because of poor mass transit are my elders. They make me think about the precariousness of my life here, how easily I might lose the things and people I have. They make me wonder about the rules and circumstances of this place where I live.
Of course, I feel uncomfortable asking those questions. And to keep that discomfort at bay, I prefer to think of this place where I live as basically just, of success as basically available to anyone here. This lets me believe that whatever I have, I deserve; I've earned it. In other words, seeing Here as the just and fortunate place and There as the sad, oppressed place obscures the reality and people of both places. It becomes easier for me to ignore what I might be doing to make this place where I live better.
I don't mean at all that I shouldn't care about what happens on the other side of the world. I should do what I can to support the people and organizations that try to make a difference there, and I should educate myself so that I know one Elsewhere from another, so that I distinguish between Kenya and the Congo, between Honduras and El Salvador, between Malaysia and Myanmar.
But saving Elsewhere doesn't absolve me from facing the pain around me, in my city, in my neighborhood. The pain that I own, or should own. If I want to save people, there are plenty just outside my own front door.
posted by A Pilgrim at 6:19 AM
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