Putting the Pieces Together
There is so much pain & suffering in the world. Everyday. Every hour people face situation that are unimaginable. Situations that are unacceptable. Situations that should not exist.
Life goes on here & will continue to do so. People will wake up & continue on. Continue to live, laugh, cry, enjoy the company of their families. There people's live will go on regardless of exactly how their trash is collected or if they have a working recycling system, or if they finally properly use & maintain their water systems so they operate at an optimal level for as long as possible. Or if they learn how to use Eco-San toilets or how to compost with Black Soldier flies. Or if they learn to plan ahead better & see the big picture & start at the beginning of a project or actually care a bit about work beyond receiving their paycheck.
Some of these things I can help.
Some of them are for them to change.
But life goes on here & will continue to do so in a decent fashion regardless of my presence or work.
I want to be somewhere, or learning & moving in the direction of a place where that is not the case. Life, everywhere, will always go on, no matter my presence in it, but I want to be in a position to make needed, helpful changes in peoples' lives or at the least to be able to sit and cry with them and together muster the energy to keep moving. Whether it's a roof that no longer leaks & a floor they won't fall through. Or another bedroom so Social Services won't take a child away from a family. Or help with a vast, strange, scary legal system, or just letting the world know that peoples' lives are being trampled into the mire & that's not ok.
I'm not passionate about these peoples' garbage.
I don't feel like this is the place for me.
But where do I belong then? What do I do now?
~Sitting On Top of the World 01.03.06
_________________________________________________
Also Known As - Post Girlfriend Depression, at least in part.
That particular torrent was sparked from finishing A Million Little Pieces and the reminder that life is not so peachy for many people.
Still I feel better about life here again, or at least less bleak and have been approaching it one day at a time. I'm still not passionate about these peoples' garbage, but it seems the better question is not what to do now, but how do I become passionate about where I am? I have so many wonderful things going for me, top on the list being the dimension enshrined by Capitalism. I would have given a lot for a few more hours in a day while I was in college and now I have the hours in spades. Yet it takes more than one element to make someone happy and time itself is a neutral force; neither good nor evil. At the very least it is providing plenty of time to research where I want to go next. Right now I'm trying to find some online Econ courses to fill a hole in my undergrad. Anything that provides concrete movement in a direction will be greatly welcome.
I still struggle with passion and being excited to see every morning. It gets sucked out of me the minute I step foot into my office and become surrounded by people being moved by external forces, above all the desire to support their families by drawing their check. Motivations beyond that still appear to be instigated from above, whether the passage of a law that needs to be enacted or questions and results being demanded by the Mayor so he, in turn, has something to show the people so he can get re-elected. And it keeps spiraling on. I miss being surrounded by people who are truly excited for life and have yet to have their belief in the ability to change it ground out of them in a war of a attrition with time.
I also realized, after an entire evening of rousing, erratic, fast moving political & social conversation with a pair of teachers at the International School here in Manila (yes, he happens to play disc) that I also miss that level of intellectual conversation as well. I think it boils down to passion and caring again. Caring enough and being privileged enough to be able to follow the news and educated enough to want to form opinions on it.
I keep going back to the words of a Peace Corps staff person who works somewhere in the organization in DC. He said that PCVs do their best work when they find someone they can argue with, someone to kick ideas around with. I'm not sure I've gotten there yet.
Hopefully the past week will have helped. I spent the entire week with Jerry, one of my counterparts from the MPDO, in Tagaytay City (just South of Manila) at two conferences. The first was Peace Corps current flagship and required to access the small grants we can apply for through them. The Project Design and Management (PDM) workshop is just what it sounds like. We spent three days developing a project idea working from a Vision down through Goals, to Objectives to an Action Plan. A helpful exercise, though old hat for most of us. Try planning out how to replace someone's rotten wall and roof on a tight budget without careful planning :o). We put together a fairly convincing approach to developing some Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) in our Municipality to collect and sell recycling materials. From there we went to a different hotel and attended two days on Solid Waste Management. Not quite as worthwhile, but still provided plenty of info to work with on the previously started project plan. Now all that is left to do is pitch the idea to our town, starting with the formidably named Solid Waste Management Task Force, and see what happens. Unfortunately those plans will have to be put on hold for a bit as Jerry is now attending to his sister who is dieing of cancer. Keep him in your thoughts. While leaving a half-day early to head in, he gets mad respect for sticking it out that long under the circumstances. Everything is still up in the air, but at least it's starting to coalesce into something. We're just still not sure what it is.
Life goes on here & will continue to do so. People will wake up & continue on. Continue to live, laugh, cry, enjoy the company of their families. There people's live will go on regardless of exactly how their trash is collected or if they have a working recycling system, or if they finally properly use & maintain their water systems so they operate at an optimal level for as long as possible. Or if they learn how to use Eco-San toilets or how to compost with Black Soldier flies. Or if they learn to plan ahead better & see the big picture & start at the beginning of a project or actually care a bit about work beyond receiving their paycheck.
Some of these things I can help.
Some of them are for them to change.
But life goes on here & will continue to do so in a decent fashion regardless of my presence or work.
I want to be somewhere, or learning & moving in the direction of a place where that is not the case. Life, everywhere, will always go on, no matter my presence in it, but I want to be in a position to make needed, helpful changes in peoples' lives or at the least to be able to sit and cry with them and together muster the energy to keep moving. Whether it's a roof that no longer leaks & a floor they won't fall through. Or another bedroom so Social Services won't take a child away from a family. Or help with a vast, strange, scary legal system, or just letting the world know that peoples' lives are being trampled into the mire & that's not ok.
I'm not passionate about these peoples' garbage.
I don't feel like this is the place for me.
But where do I belong then? What do I do now?
~Sitting On Top of the World 01.03.06
_________________________________________________
Also Known As - Post Girlfriend Depression, at least in part.
That particular torrent was sparked from finishing A Million Little Pieces and the reminder that life is not so peachy for many people.
Still I feel better about life here again, or at least less bleak and have been approaching it one day at a time. I'm still not passionate about these peoples' garbage, but it seems the better question is not what to do now, but how do I become passionate about where I am? I have so many wonderful things going for me, top on the list being the dimension enshrined by Capitalism. I would have given a lot for a few more hours in a day while I was in college and now I have the hours in spades. Yet it takes more than one element to make someone happy and time itself is a neutral force; neither good nor evil. At the very least it is providing plenty of time to research where I want to go next. Right now I'm trying to find some online Econ courses to fill a hole in my undergrad. Anything that provides concrete movement in a direction will be greatly welcome.
I still struggle with passion and being excited to see every morning. It gets sucked out of me the minute I step foot into my office and become surrounded by people being moved by external forces, above all the desire to support their families by drawing their check. Motivations beyond that still appear to be instigated from above, whether the passage of a law that needs to be enacted or questions and results being demanded by the Mayor so he, in turn, has something to show the people so he can get re-elected. And it keeps spiraling on. I miss being surrounded by people who are truly excited for life and have yet to have their belief in the ability to change it ground out of them in a war of a attrition with time.
I also realized, after an entire evening of rousing, erratic, fast moving political & social conversation with a pair of teachers at the International School here in Manila (yes, he happens to play disc) that I also miss that level of intellectual conversation as well. I think it boils down to passion and caring again. Caring enough and being privileged enough to be able to follow the news and educated enough to want to form opinions on it.
I keep going back to the words of a Peace Corps staff person who works somewhere in the organization in DC. He said that PCVs do their best work when they find someone they can argue with, someone to kick ideas around with. I'm not sure I've gotten there yet.
Hopefully the past week will have helped. I spent the entire week with Jerry, one of my counterparts from the MPDO, in Tagaytay City (just South of Manila) at two conferences. The first was Peace Corps current flagship and required to access the small grants we can apply for through them. The Project Design and Management (PDM) workshop is just what it sounds like. We spent three days developing a project idea working from a Vision down through Goals, to Objectives to an Action Plan. A helpful exercise, though old hat for most of us. Try planning out how to replace someone's rotten wall and roof on a tight budget without careful planning :o). We put together a fairly convincing approach to developing some Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) in our Municipality to collect and sell recycling materials. From there we went to a different hotel and attended two days on Solid Waste Management. Not quite as worthwhile, but still provided plenty of info to work with on the previously started project plan. Now all that is left to do is pitch the idea to our town, starting with the formidably named Solid Waste Management Task Force, and see what happens. Unfortunately those plans will have to be put on hold for a bit as Jerry is now attending to his sister who is dieing of cancer. Keep him in your thoughts. While leaving a half-day early to head in, he gets mad respect for sticking it out that long under the circumstances. Everything is still up in the air, but at least it's starting to coalesce into something. We're just still not sure what it is.
posted by george at 1:49 AM
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