Sunday, September 27, 2015

Community Life

(Modified and written a few months ago)

As our 1 yr wedding anniversary rapidly approaches, reflections over this past year have come to mind. Our celebration was an amazing testament of our relationship, family and journey. All things considered, we have had a great first year of marriage. No one spent a night on the couch; we made it through 14 months of unemployment; made four international trips; survived the riots of Baltimore; moved to a new city; and learned, laughed, loved and cried along the way.

One of our greatest struggles this last year has been loneliness. Despite having each other and embarking on this new journey, we both experienced loneliness like never before. Moving back to the United States for me and the first time for the husband has been one of our biggest, most painful adjustment. Adjusting our expectations of people, transportation systems, family, church and work life has been at times overwhelming.

We came from a microcosm of community life. Whether you like each other or not, living life as an expat in a foreign country automatically creates community. You usually share at least one common language, educational background, food preferences and societal norms. When in a place where you are the minority, you cling to each other if for nothing else than comfort in similar-ness.

Stepping into a country as large as the U.S., it is quite easy to feel overwhelmed and lost in the shuffle. It feels like every one else has their space, their friends, their life and their busy-ness. It takes a strong concerted effort to break through that, which sometimes I must admit we have lost motivation for.

This last year, we have searched and feel we still come up short. For fifteen months we attended the same church. After fighting to find a place, we moved on only to realize that it is hard to fit in anywhere. We might just be looking for something that doesn't exist. A natural place where you think you can build community has been disappointing. We felt lost in a sea of people who have their own stuff going on.

Aside from that social avenue, we have gone to meetup.com events, invited neighbors for happy hour, reached out to co-workers for weekend rendezvous and a plethora of other activities. Our experience has always been that of going on a fun first date but yet you never get that call back for a second.

The most interesting part of all of this is that most everyone we have come in contact with is lonely. It seems as though we are surrounded by lonely people. We hear the same story on those first date encounters - "making friends post-college is difficult." Initially we saw a rise in human interaction after getting a dog. Now it feels like we need to have a kid so we can piggy back off their friendships to meet the parents.

All that to say, we are not friendless. We have some amazing friends and family. Unfortunately, we find that the majority of them live far away. We wish for days gone by when your best friend lived down the street. The days when you eat your peanut butter sandwich on the front porch, play for hours on the swing and bury each other in the piles of leaves. The days when making friends was merely as simple as two human beings in the same place at the same time -- that was reason enough to be friends.

We are still hopeful that as our community grows and strengthens, we can continue to share life in meaningful ways. Of course we will never be completely lonely, we have each other and that is the beauty this marriage has taught us thus far.


Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Treadmill

Discontentment has been infection for as long as I can remember. When I was in high school, I remember thinking that I will be happy once I get to college. When I was in college, I remember thinking I will be happy when I graduate, make money and no longer have to study on the weekends. Once I graduated, I remember thinking that everything will be perfect when I pay off my student loan debt. Last year, life was going to be perfect once we had our wedding, Gabs got his residency, a job and then a shorter commute. Now that high school is over and college is over, I have a graduate degree and five years of post-graduate employment behind me, married, have a dog, Gabs is employed, I have a 10min commute and I am still looking for the greener grass. Now it looks like a house, a reliable car, still paying off that student loan debt and those precious few weeks of yearly vacation time.

I arrived in Liberia, West Africa last night. I was welcomed with the ever present haggling, everyone fighting to make a dollar. Rain on the tin roof, humidity, the smell of dried fish and sweat also greeted me. Last weekend while camping with some friends, one of them referenced our previous life living in the Congo as “feeling so alive.” We both reflected on that statement for a moment and responded that we did feel alive at times, and others, it was just normal life. The potholes, failed internet, rice and beans, cheap vacations, people carrying machetes, bright colors and crowded markets all become part of the routine after a while just like U.S. highways, the grocery store and every Sunday monopolized by football season.

Three weeks ago Gabs and I were strongly considering buying a house. We spent our spare time on Zillow and realtor.com. Gabs is a dreamer and I am a realist. When the dream can become possible, it’s full steam ahead. We almost burnt ourselves out so fixated on this idea. We had some money burning a hole in our pocket, high rent prices in our area and a desire for a backyard and semi-permanent address were all too overwhelming. Once we finally woke up to the reality that we may not want to live in suburban D.C., as that is the only place we can afford, and that right now we are probably the least committed to anything that we will be in our married life until we retire, why rush? So we put a lid on it and focused our energy on finding a reliable car, something that we could use and enjoy with a lot less commitment right now.

This grass is greener thing is a hoax. Do I really believe that owning a house, no student loan debt and whatever else I can come up with will make me happier? Sometimes I do, and unfortunately sometimes it blurs my vision. In an effort to come to terms with this internal struggle, I googled a few Buddhist ideals on contentment; there are a few teachings in Buddhism that I really appreciate and challenge me.

This is what I found:
“Our own obsession with economic growth seems natural to us because we have forgotten the historicity of the “needs” we now take for granted. That includes a monetary income in Western societies now thoroughly monetarized and commodified, where almost anything can be converted into anything else through a common medium of exchange. Since our needs (or rather our wants) are now taken for granted as defining our common humanity as much as universal human rights do, we are encouraged to forget what for Buddhism is an essential human attribute if we are to be happy: the need for self-limitation.

Any formulation of “needs” is as much a value judgement as a determination of fact. According to Buddhism, the fundamental human problem is not the technological and economic issue of meeting all our material wants — something psychologically as well as ecologically impossible — but the psychological and spiritual task of understanding the nature of our own minds. Without having been seduced by the utopian dream of a technological cornucopia, it would never occur to most “poor” people to become fixated on fantasies about all the things they might have. For them, their ends are an expression of the means available to them. We are often imposing our own value judgements when we insist on seeing them as poor. It is presumptuous to assume that they must be unhappy, and that the only way to become happy is to start on the treadmill of a lifestyle dependent on the market and increasingly preoccupied with consumption.” [1]

My boss and I had a conversation with one of our Liberian staff about this very topic a month ago. He made a comment that we in the U.S. have so much more. I agreed with him to a point – we have so much more wealth and opportunity available to us but compared to the African culture I have witnessed, they have so much more community and deep seeded connected-ness that what we have in the U.S., which I personally find more valuable. Even after having these conversations and appreciating another way of life, I always find myself back on that treadmill.

Another blog I found gave five simple actions for peace and contentment:

1.       Show humility

2.       Recognize enough: I have finally accepted my true life is happening right now. I celebrate the accomplishments and good things as they happen and avoid looking ahead too far for more of the same.

3.       Simplify life: Give up what you don’t need and be glad you did. (Gabs usually tries to apply this to my closet.)

4.       Have real fun: Regret can be a mood killer. We often take the serious and over-analyzed road when making decisions. It’s good to be responsible; it’s also good to take a chance even if it entails a big mistake. (I regret not making the water park happen this summer.)

5.       Make room for quiet:  You can best recognize that gut feeling that can act as a reliable compass once you turn off all the noisy, messy distracting sounds of life.[2]

September 12, 2015 is another day in my life. Regardless of which green or less green hill I am on, this day is going to pass me by. Am I going to be content in what I have? Am I going to have that sense of alive-ness whether I am roaming the streets of Monrovia, Liberia or walking the dog? It’s a choice that only I can make. Presently, Gabs and I have enough: jobs, a place to live, good health, safety and each other. That is contentment.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Would we do the same?

"...change the debate from one about fear to one about human beings helping human beings."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34130639