Going to Ghana

My friend Sam is heading for a two year post in Ghana with the Peace Corps this September. I can't think of a finer person to have an opportunity to go abroad and do work he loves. He wrote a letter to his friends via facebook that made me reflect on what it takes to do something like this: to willingly give up all of your western comforts, your friends, and turn away from home for over 700 days strait. Its a great thing to do; to go live in another part of the world on their terms, subject to their culture.

I believe Sam will understand better than most the reality of the community he is working with as a result. He is putting his own ideology to the ultimate test and subjecting it to a most rigorous exam. It's going to be great.

What is the point of this? Sam is living those things I am only fantasizing about, and it makes me feel foolish. I am having a tough semester with my thesis, the math class, and all the waiting around for a decision on whether the University is going to make me stay another year or not. I feel like I need a real change, like I need to get away from the West and see how brutal life really can be outside of the white picket fences. I think this will be the true test of my theoretical beliefs.

For the last 6 months, under the guidance of one of my mentors I have discovered a whole new world view; one that seemed to confirm feelings I have had for so many year, and that wasn't based in division. For these last months I have sat around and talked peoples ear off about this stuff, becoming a really ideological person as a result, no longer laughing. As I am now reflecting on this transition, I realize how much I have learned and how much more articulate I have become on the things that matter to me: race, immigration, discrimination, and identity. But it has also shaken me up and left me with little to hold on to.

As a result, it has pushed me back towards the wisdom of the Dao De Jing; I find myself reading from it almost every day, and feeling more connected than ever to the text. I can't say that it has penetrated to the deepest parts of my identity (those parts that control reactions), but more and more, I find myself asking what the Dao might suggest. I find myself criticizing the path I have been on for the last 6 months.

I am not a coersive person, nor do I want to be. I'm not interested in power or money or success. Of course, I have dreams of wealth and power, but that I only because I was brought up in a world that preached such things as being virtuous. They are not however, they are so meaningless in the schematic of life. I am going to have a hard time shaking this over the next three days in NJ as I go pretend to be someone I am not, hoping to trick people into dismantling a national symbol under the guise of patriotism. Yeah, I love the end result, but I can't love the method. How legitimate can it be if we are only achieving change through deception? How different is that from the normative behavior of any hegemon?

Sam is giving up power in order to help conserve natural resources and protect the environment. He is not doing it for the girls, or for the fame, but because he loves it, and because he is good at it. I want that kind of experience; I want to look back and see my life littered with such activities. Its not about legacy however, but about happiness and fulfillment.

Importance is so subjective, so go do what you think is important, and go do it because you love it.