I’ve held off on posting this photo because it makes me uncomfortable, which isn’t nearly as fun to write about as spring and my monster-cat. It makes me squirm because when I took this man’s photo he was holding a cup and asking for money or food, and it didn’t really phase me. I kept on walking, paying more attention to the lines of the bridge, the light reflecting on metal. It wasn’t until later as I was scrolling through my photos that it stopped me cold. I had passed by this scene, stopped to document it and moved on without really absorbing it. And that’s hard to admit, even to myself.

I’m not sure if it’s a by-product of growing up, or studying politics, or living in a city known for its poverty, but a switch has been flipped somewhere that has made me more immune to suffering, even (especially?) when it is right in front of my nose. As a child I remember feeling others’ pain acutely, sometimes even adopting it physically. When I began taking politics and history classes at Oberlin, it brought the horrors that humans inflict on one another into sharp relief: the brutal killings, the repressive totality of poverty, the reality of having no bootstraps to grasp. And it depressed me, horribly for awhile, until I gradually absorbed it and moved on. I had the knowledge, sure, but out of what seemed like necessity, I stopped really feeling it, I stopped trying to empathize.

And in my time in New York, where I worked for an NGO that worked with refugee women and children, writing about the daily risks that children had to take (rape, capture, forced military service, death) just to get some firewood or go to school in a country that was a warzone. And then I would step blinking into Manhattan, land of the $400 dollar haircuts and $300 shoes. For awhile, the juxtaposition was just too much. I knew I was doing what I could, but it just never felt like enough. I wondered if it ever would. But there, too, I worked to gradually let it go, to realize that I was helping no one by not being grateful for what I had, and continuing to live my life fully.

And here, in DC, the same pattern. When we first moved, I was constantly saddened by the economic disparity, by the segregation, the number of homeless men and women, by Steve’s students who didn’t have families and homes where they felt safe. And I do what I can, I work for a program that gives people a hand up and I volunteer and I give money, but somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling it. I started to scrape it away quickly before it has a chance to burrow into my bones.

It’s such a fine line for me, it always has been. My natural inclination will always be to take on the pain, to absorb it even when it lessens no other burden. But as I’ve learned that as long as I’m really giving what I can, I need to draw the line between acknowledging the darkness in the world, and shouldering it as my own. A first step will be opening up again to that which is right in my backyard, that which I can actually affect.

All the death and sadness of the past year has caused me to turn inward and to focus on my own healing. Which has been necessary and healthy and good. But it’s time to open back up to the world, both dark and light, and feel it all.

• April 14th, 2008
• musings, travels, with music
• 2 comments
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