Just a thought.

Her: What do you study?

Me: Me? I study Biochemistry.

Her: Kindness. That’s what you study. You are the future!

My heart was touched

I went on facebook today and saw some girl write about how she’s working in orphanages and shit in a developing country and how it’s giving her a whole new outlook on life and how it’s so eye-opening and all that jazz

Ugh, it made me fucking sick. 

K, maybe she’s doing legit shit, so I can’t really say, but this person’s history is not really conducive to that end. From my own personal experience, when placed in volunteer positions like that, you don’t really do anything. You’re just being used for your money, to draw it out of your country into theirs. You know nothing about that culture You don’t belong in that history. You will not make a lasting difference. And to top it all off, you’re not even trying to identify or connect with them on a personal level.

Let’s set the stage from a slightly more objective point of view. Things like what I did are programs which bring foreigners in to do volunteer work in orphanages and schools. You’ll be warmly welcomed by an agreeable host family, eat meals with them, and they’ll rave on about everything like that crazy uncle you’ve got. You’ll spend a very limited amount of time daily in your “work”, maybe two or three times weekly with kids that you’ve just barely met. You’ll be in that country anywhere from a couple weeks to a few months, completely unaware of its current state of affairs, recent history, or societal values. You won’t understand basic cultural references, people’s everyday problems, behavioral cues, or common customs. You’ll kind of be that clueless foreigner who is slow to understand situations, but it’s fine because you can’t be expected to.

I left this post to eat dinner, so my train of thought is pretty much gone, which is a shame, because I kinda liked writing and thinking about this topic! But I’ll try to finish it best as possible.

What are the problems with going on trips like this? Let’s see. Globalization? Pushing american values and idealism onto young individuals in a society where they might frankly be useless. Idealisitcally, the money that you used in getting there would be much better spent by the people you’re gracing with your presence. Anything you bring is probably cheaper there and you might be wasting everyone’s time. Might be. I don’t want to sound too pessimistic with everything I’m saying with this post, but I’ll just go by the “probably”, and the “realistically”. There’s a lot more thinking about this part that I should be doing… But I’m a little tired haha, so maybe some other time.

Don’t get me wrong, my experiences abroad did indeed enhance my views on life in other countries as well as my own. But rather than call it a “whole new” outlook, I’ll call it a keener, sharper one. One that’s much more cynical, skeptical and that might just be a little too utilitarian. Yes, I got to immerse myself in an entirely different culture, experience world travel, and learn a new language. That stuff was awesome. But I definitely got way more out of my trip than anyone I was trying to “help”. 

I’ve changed. I no longer care. That statement is debatable. Let me elaborate.

Someone spilled soy sauce in the lounge of a building on campus today. Its a building shared by multiple minority retention projects, as well as others, and so the lounge is a communal space as well. What happened is as follows. At first I saw someone I knew take a downward open plastic bottle of soy sauce—like the ones they use for ketchup—and place it in the sink face down. I didn’t notice what was going on. Then I saw other people get up and grab wads of paper towels and go over in front of the fridge where he got the sauce from. There was a huge puddle all over the floor. By the time I saw it, there were a ton of other people already helping to clean it up.

I sat in my chair still studying, pretending I didn’t see, but contemplating my existence in comparison to the soy sauce spill on the floor. I felt somewhat guilty. In times past I would be the first one across the room on my knees with others watching me. But not now, not after growing up a little. I relished in the guilt and shame I felt in myself at being an apathetic, voluntary, bystander in the clean up of what was a small spill. I felt somewhat alive in being one of those people, the kind that doesn’t care and stands idly by while other people help without being asked.

Considering the situation reasonably, I wasn’t really needed to help mop up the mess. The rest of them definitely had it under control. And how hard is it to clean up one liquid with no solid in it. Besides, I was tired. I deserve a rest after all the shot I’ve been through lately. Right? Its even more interesting to consider something else. If I had got up instead to alleviate my guilt, would that not in itself be an act of self-satisfaction, doing unnecessary things to make me feel better about myself? Would that be similarly selfish and even more unreasonable then getting down on the floor with everyone else?

I’m not answering any of my own questions, just asking them, thinking about them and what they mean to who I am. Perhaps this incident signals the first little success in my quest to be more selfish, less idealistic, not doing what I “should” do. But it was still pretty damn hard to resist natural tendencies. I was raised pretty damn fucking well by my parents, I gotta hand it to them. I think that awareness is important, as well as growing an ability to force myself to act selfishly without guilt. That combination can help me take advantage of social situations, wearing my heart on my sleeve like usual when it’s advantageous, or shutting away what I value about myself when it can only hurt me.