Reflections

As I write this entry, I'm sitting on a breezy patio over looking the Arabian Sea. The sun is setting down into the ocean, and if one ever doubted the existence of God, the spectacular ray of blues, yellows, brilliant reds, fluorescent pinks, makes all believe. I'll be boarding the plane in five days to return home, back to the culture and people that share my traditions, foods, dress, and lifestyles. If I've had anything here in India it has been the opportunity to view and experience the true meaning of culture, both of another peoples and more acutely my own.

Currently air travel is in turmoil again. The India papers are reporting cases of whole planes full of people forcing others off because they were speaking in what sounded like Arabic languages, the creation of cultural warfare. And like has been many times through out the ages of humanity, we are falling prey into the hands of few who want of us to believe that it is our differences that separate us. It is our differences that makes of dangerous to each other. It is our differences of which we should be afraid. Yet, as I reflect on my three months here on the other side of the world from which I was raised, I find that it is precisely our differences that make the world such a beautiful place. It is our differences that make life brighter, more intelligent, gentler and more interesting. And it is our similarities that make us more human. No matter where you live, or what language you speak the laws of the universe and humanity speaks the same words. Mothers the world over speak the same words of desires, dreams, nurturing and struggles. Children share the same spark of brightness and wisdom in their eyes. A sweet child's caress on your cheek feels the same regardless. Women struggle with the same battles of dreams and obligations. Men's faces are still lined with the desire to assert their beautiful masculine selves, and break the same when beaten down over and over again.

This summer, because I stepped outside of my safety boundaries, I have been more aware the dichotomy of what both I and humanity are. I stood, sweating and overloaded in the dry desert seat as bus drivers refused to let me on the bus because of my race. I shed tears over parting with women of whom we share no words. I was forced to sit in separate sections of restraints and was refused to be taken seriously because of my gender. I broke bread and shared laughter and light with men whom never left their villages. I was placed on pedestals, and leered at. I experienced my own capacity for generosity and my own coldness as I turned away from beggars. I experienced my ability to be understanding and my ability to close my mind to my best ideals about people and the world. I experienced both the good and evil that exists in myself and others.

And perhaps that's one of my most potent messages of this summer spend away, the battle that we all face with good and evil. One of my favorite writers, Paulo Coelho, writes that we are all both good and evil, and that at in the end it is our choice of whom which we are. I believe that I have the capacity to be both good and evil, in not just my lifetime, but every day I am forced to make that choice. And sometimes I choose evil. Sometimes, letting the evil win is easier than doing the good. And sometimes I choose good, even when it's harder. Within lies both the sinner and the saint. When I look back I realize that my capacity to be evil is not based on opinions that people told me. It not based on what I am told are good actions, or bad actions. Not based on people who have told which people in the world are to be trusted and whom are to be placed the blame. In each circumstance I made my own decision on what to think and how to act. If I acted in generosity, it is because I choose to. If I acted in coldness, it is because I choose to. No blame or justification need to be placed on any other party.

When I reflect on what I had hoped to learn this summer, I don't think it was a lesson on the list. I had hoped to learn about India history and culture, challenges facing small human NGO's, techniques and strategies for working across cultural bounders, and of all these things I have learned a tremendous amount. And I also learned a lot about myself, and the capacity and limitations of good intentions, bad intentions, good and evil. Of how no one person is good and no one person is evil.

So when I strike out into the world to do "good" work. When development and human rights professionals run off to "save" the oppressed from the oppressor be sure your aware who the "supposed" enemy before you place blame, because it each situation you will be confronted with both what you think is right and what you think is wrong. You may find that the so called oppressor is doing the most he can in the bad situation he is placed. And you may find that those who are supposedly there to help, have damaging ulterior motives. Or you may find that people act good for all the wrong reasons, and act bad for all the good ones. Or that your own presence may be the most oppressing of them all.

At the end of the day, when the sun sets over the horizon, and the first stars twinkle in the day light, the only actions you're accountable for are your own, rather good or evil. And the good news here, is that regardless in all, the oppressed and the oppressor, the mother or the child, the American or the Asian, the man or the women good exists and that's what we're striving for her, and that is what makes it all so beautiful.