I wrote this yesterday... realizing that maybe I had a special angel yesterday.
Sometimes, some of the things I see here, some of the
stories I hear, the situations I grow to understand, some of the experiences I’ve
had, can kind of get me down. And some days are definitely worse than others. Yesterday
was definitely one of those days. I had just heard ten too many hard stories, had
one too many hard experiences, come up against a few to many hard truths to accept,
and I was at the end of my rope in terms of understanding the world.
How can such wonderful people be facing such hard
situations? Why, in the face of everything, do people continue to harm each
other, to spew such hate speech, to use violence, to dominate each other? And
what makes the large discrepancy in living situations, when no one is better
than another, but for some reason some people are always facing struggle, it
seems? How can children die of such curable diseases like malaria? Why are some
people born into such financial poverty in situations with such little hope?
These are questions I try not to think about all the time,
because when I do, my brain starts going a million miles an hour, but cannot
solve a single thing.
But last night, the questions all came in, overwhelmingly.
And so today, I did my best to continue my work, despite the exhaustion and the
questions.
But I wasn’t quite ok until my bus ride home from town
today. I was sitting between a teenaged boy and an old man, and as they both
had their phones out, the boy was awkwardly trying to figure out whether or not
to send a text to his crush? Girlfriend? And halfway home, the man received a
phone call from someone who probably was his wife, asking when he was coming
home for supper.
For some reason, this experience was exactly what I needed.
The sense of interconnectedness. Despite all other differences, all over the
world, people share more similarities than differences. Teenage boys are still
trying to figure out what to text teenage girls. Older men are still getting
calls asking when they will be home. The world is the same here as it is there.
And it continues to rotate. We all exist in some sort of space where we all
need connection, we all need belonging, and we all need love. Despite any other
divisions, differences, and problems, it all comes down to the same basic
things. We are all the same.
How reassuring and great is that?
Sending love from Uganda
