development work and me

i feel like i want to have some deep and profound thoughts tonight. however - this is very unlikely. so i will just have my normal thoughts.

today i got an email from amy - two in fact - the second was about jw who is currently in lesheto working with aids/hiv patients in a clinic. this is especially relevant now as i am just recently completed this weekends emotional/intellectual freak-out about doing a phd on development theory. and though i still have no interest in doing that particularly - i am starting to think. i always thought that development work was someone else. someone like amy. someone who really wanted to do it - to change the world - and who was in a position to actually, possibly, achieve that kind of goal.

changing the world through development work was for someone else - not for me. the thing i realized today is that that isn't good enough. i mean - i'm not saying that i am going to do substantial development work. but what i think that i want to realize is that, for me, that decision is a choice. if i was a different person - someone who hadn't gone to university - someone from a lower-income background where i wasn't expected to and right now i would married and living in a rented house in a town of 10,000 while my husband worked in a factory that would be a completely respectful life - and it never would have occured to that me to go to africa/india/asia and work with an ngo, work with the un. work on the ground.

the thing is - that's not me. me is an upper-middle class white girl, from a multi-cultural city - the product of the (okay - one of the) best universities in Canada - who chooses to remain largely unaware and ignorant of what goes on in the world. who chooses not to send 10% of my paycheck to steven lewis, who chooses not take time off from her precious life and do something. help someone.

there are many reasons why i do not want to be "in the feild" somewhere. i don't like hot, i don't like bugs, i like showering everyday. i like the north american/european lifestyle to which i am accustomed. and it is a lot to ask of a person to put other people (and by other people we mean strangers, not one's family) ahead of oneself. even for a small amount of time. this is very difficult for people to do. in our society no one really has to do that. (maybe some medical professionals, the police - but that is your job - whereas moving to africa would be your life).

but the thing is - it should NOT be a lot to ask. if someone is lucky enough to enjoy 80 years of food, sheltar, television, and climate control - if it really so much to ask that they take 6months and try to improve the lives of people for whom food is something which happens every other day, sheltar is temporary, television is.... ? and climate control is light coloured clothing?

the other thing is - what could i do? i have no skills. i speak..... english. i obviously don't know very much about this - and in many respects that's just another reason which i am giving to myself as to why i am not "there".

this is not something which i am going to work through in the next several days - i don't know why i feel this overwhleming amount of pressure to create my life. i am still young. it's not like i am planning to have kids at 28 so i better be ready by then or anything. it's not like i'm planning to die? hell - if i was planning to die i probably wouldn't be so concerned with what to do in the next year or two.

so far i have never felt that i was making decisions about my life at the expense of living it - if anything the opposite. and i think starting now would be very stupid. the problem is that it's not like it's as simple as choosing life decisions column A and life decisions column B. wtf is an experience anyways?

i want instant results in a world where that is not possible.

Dawson's theme song:

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,
I want to know right now what will it be.
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,
Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

my resolution for tonight is to try to do more of the little things in life - because when i do them i enjoy them - and maybe that will relax me enough that i will actually be able to acomplish schoolwork - because i cannot make decisions about what i am interested in without knowledge of my choices.

as a final note - i think we can appreciate the irony of me agonizing over what choices to make in order that i can make the most of my life - when over half of the world wakes up in the morning wishing that they had the luxury of that choice.