I am feeling melancholy this morning, largely because it's an anti-climactic Christmas. Most of the usual family festivities were yesterday, and I'm having a fairly low-key lunch with my parents and grandma, followed later today by a train ride back to Chicago to get ready to leave for India tomorrow. I'm feeling less eager than usual to go to India, and I can understand why. It is my first visit since my five-month stay earlier this year, and I came out of that feeling like I had survived rather than thrived in Mumbai. I also just finished a pretty dark book set in Mumbai in which the worst of rat-race human nature was in full force - the same sort of forces that turn me off to living there myself. And then there's my apprehension about going for the wedding of my guy's sister - he's been busy and his calls have been less reliable than usual, and I'm not sure just how out of place I'm going to feel during all of the family chaos. I'm staying with neighbors who are friends of his family since the family house will be full, so I'm afraid I'm going to feel like a total outsider. I also just don't really feel like going on another long solo journey - I dread my consecutive flights of 12, 5 1/2, and 2 hours, followed by a 2-3 hour car ride, followed by disorientation, exhaustion, and feeling overwhelmed. And I don't want to deal with all of the last-minute details (paying rent, calling my bank, packing, making sure I don't show up without at least some small gifts of thanks for my hosts...) before taking off. Whine, whine, whine. Bleh.
Probably because I've got so much anxiety about my life for the next...well, foreseeable future, I am also feeling my sense of disappointment in humanity amplified. The book I just finished didn't help. The neighbors in a housing society end up killing an old man who was once their friend and mentor, because if he doesn't go for the huge payout that a developer is offering to move out of their building and let it be demolished for a new luxury high rise, then nobody else can get the money either. And the crazy thing to me is, it just seems like an extreme consequence of people applying the common logic of operating always in their own self interest. I want us to be better, to have consciences and an interest for the greater good. Even Christmas seems taken over by people's interest in buying and consuming, and it's hard to imagine what it would look like if you took out all of the things money can buy. Where's the joy? Where's the real commitment to peace and connection with other people? And what can I do to start living that way all of the time, to stop worrying about whether some people are getting more than they deserve and start working toward everyone having what they need and a fair chance to dream bigger if they want? How do we start making sure we measure ourselves and others according to our human value and not our monetary value? We need to spend more time with people and not at work. We need to think about others' dreams as well as our own and realize that we don't lose our own by taking others' into account. I know I'm idealistic, but I really don't want to live in a world where everyone just accepts that other people may suffer while they spend their resources only on themselves. I don't want to hear debates about the entitlement of the wealthy not to have to share their wealth, as though they are not connected to others around them, as though the most important issue at hand is the injustice of forced redistribution and not the inequity of the way resources are distributed to begin with. I know I've talked about my feeling of guilt about my relative good fortune while others struggle, but this is not only about guilt. It just seems so ugly and unjust, and I just wish that we could look at each other in a way that we see our shared humanity and not only our competition for pieces of the same pie.
Probably because I've got so much anxiety about my life for the next...well, foreseeable future, I am also feeling my sense of disappointment in humanity amplified. The book I just finished didn't help. The neighbors in a housing society end up killing an old man who was once their friend and mentor, because if he doesn't go for the huge payout that a developer is offering to move out of their building and let it be demolished for a new luxury high rise, then nobody else can get the money either. And the crazy thing to me is, it just seems like an extreme consequence of people applying the common logic of operating always in their own self interest. I want us to be better, to have consciences and an interest for the greater good. Even Christmas seems taken over by people's interest in buying and consuming, and it's hard to imagine what it would look like if you took out all of the things money can buy. Where's the joy? Where's the real commitment to peace and connection with other people? And what can I do to start living that way all of the time, to stop worrying about whether some people are getting more than they deserve and start working toward everyone having what they need and a fair chance to dream bigger if they want? How do we start making sure we measure ourselves and others according to our human value and not our monetary value? We need to spend more time with people and not at work. We need to think about others' dreams as well as our own and realize that we don't lose our own by taking others' into account. I know I'm idealistic, but I really don't want to live in a world where everyone just accepts that other people may suffer while they spend their resources only on themselves. I don't want to hear debates about the entitlement of the wealthy not to have to share their wealth, as though they are not connected to others around them, as though the most important issue at hand is the injustice of forced redistribution and not the inequity of the way resources are distributed to begin with. I know I've talked about my feeling of guilt about my relative good fortune while others struggle, but this is not only about guilt. It just seems so ugly and unjust, and I just wish that we could look at each other in a way that we see our shared humanity and not only our competition for pieces of the same pie.
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