Rest

I like to be on the move. I like to have purpose, to have a goal that I'm working towards. 

Rest isn't easy for me. 

Blame capitalism. Blame brain chemistry. Either way, the reality remains - too much time in open space is hard for me. 

This inclination is problematic for several reasons, the most glaring being that rest is a necessary component to life. We are supposed to rest at some point every day, every week, every month, every year. Just like nature. We're supposed to follow nature's lead. The only reason that we have the harvest every year is because the soil rests in the winter months. The earth can't produce without rest. Neither can I. 

One of my friends once said how thankful she is for the night.  She said that nights are gifts that separate days from one another.  The wisdom in her thought didn't resonate with me at first, but then I imagined life as one long day with no restarts. 

She is right.

We need breaks. We need rest. We need restarts. 

I fight them, but I know I need them. 

Here's the irony of it all - the best things in my life have come after periods of rest. It's a bit of a paradox to be highly productive while being simultaneously highly reflective, in that reflection comes in the silence, but either way, the reality remains.  

My work in the Netherlands was a perfect reminder of all of this reality. We did two murals at two separate locations.  My plane landed and I hit the ground running. I went from the airport to meet one of our partners, then to the paint store, then I don't remember because I fell asleep in the car from not having closed my eyes in 30 something hours. 

Muscle memory took over. Years of muralling around the world has created a default pattern that I don't even question. I know the curriculum. I know the process. I know what to do. Autopilot. 

We celebrated the first mural on Saturday.  We cut ribbons and took photos and invited families. 

And then, a day of rest. 

I roamed Amsterdam on my own for an entire day.  I sat. I walked. I reflected.

I looked at the mistakes we made in the first project. I made a plan for the next project. 

I had time to stop moving. Time to analyze. Time to look at my mistakes and correct them. 

The next mural was better than the first, not in the final product, but in the process.

Progress through rest. 

A rhythm of life that I push against when all it is trying to do is bring me to a better version of myself. 

I won't say that the second mural was perfectly executed. There isn't such a thing  - but I will say that we made better mistakes the second time around. Mistakes that would have been the same as the first ones without the space for reflection.  

I was walking through the building at the location of the second mural when I saw a very literal sign that felt like it was posted just as a reminder to me. 

I will make better mistakes tomorr(ow)

That's the goal. Better mistakes tomorrow.  Better mistakes only happen if you take the time to look at the ones you just made, if you let yourself stop moving long enough to see clearly. 

Rest is a good friend to me.  It's a completely one-sided relationship, but she won't give up. 

Maybe I'll learn. Maybe I'll give in to open space.  Maybe I'll just be better at it tomorrow. 

Welcome.

We are all good at different things - it's true, I know,  I like to remind myself of that when I'm confronted with what I'm not good at.  I'm not good at being flexible in my routine.  I'm not good at administrative endeavors. I'm not good at being nice when I'm cold and/or tired.  I'm not good at speaking, really in any capacity, but particularly if I don't have time to process my thoughts first. 

And I'm really not good at hospitality. Some of my closest friends haven't been to my apartment.  I don't host people. My space is my space is my space. It's my little carved out area that I protect, even to a fault. 

Hospitality - not my gift. 

I'm better at other things. 

So many other cultures that I have had the privilege of experiencing are based around welcoming other people. To turn away the stranger is to bring disgrace to the family, to the country. 

I live in New York.  I swim through tourists anytime I go downtown. I squish my shoulders together and hop through the sea of people in frustration. My arms are not open to the stranger. 

Hospitality - not my gift. 

So here I am in Holland, a land that feels oddly familiar to me. The biggest shock I've dealt with has been the abundance of bicycles.  It's incredible. There are more bikes than cars.  I can't get over it.

Other than that, everyone knows English, fashion is similar, the food is the same, and the scenery reminds me of different parts of the Midwest.  I haven't had to adjust. 

The culture in the refugee center is obviously different. There isn't one nationality. There isn't one language. There isn't one religion. There isn't one fashion style. There are people that are learning to survive in a new land while still holding on to the values and customs that they have known their whole lives. 

Many, being from the Middle East, are really good at hospitality. Really good. Welcoming the stranger is part of their DNA. 

The mural that the boys are painting is in the passageway of a bike path. Bike messengers are passing us all day long. 

It's a highly trafficked area. 

People see us. People stop. People talk to us. People help paint. 

That's how I met my new friend.  I'll call him Munir to protect his identity. Munir was walking past and saw our group painting. He spoke only Arabic, but he knew he had to show me his own artwork. He pulled out his phone and tried to explain the detail work of a stencil painting he had done. I'm sure I only understood a piece of what he was trying to communicate, but it wasn't difficult to understand that this man was a talented artist. Like really, really good.

About an hour later his wife came to visit us.   She spoke English and showed me portraits that Munir had painted of his children. 

Then she said, this one is of our son the day he arrived here from Syria. 

The boy had one coat on his arms, no bags, and a tired look on his face. 

She said, "This is good day for us.  This is day we get our son back."

I looked at them and felt such love and compassion for them. Their eyes were soft and gentle. 

The woman then started speaking to me in Dutch (classic mistake because pass for Dutch quite easily) and so I told her that I'm not from here, I'm from NYC. 

Munir understood me.  He stopped the entire conversation, grabbed my hand, and said, "Welcome. You are welcome here."

My heart stopped beating. 

I just left NYC and my biggest concern is being withoug kombucha for ten days. This man fled war and prayed his family would be reunited again. 

He lives in a refugee shelter and may never see his hometown for the rest of his life. 

With joy in his heart, he reached out his hand to welcome me to the tiny plot of land that he was allowed to stay on. 

Hospitality is central to middle eastern culture, I get that, but this man has to know that I left a country that just banned him from being allowed in. Yet, instead of feeling anger and frustration, he opened his arms to me. 

He didn't hear me say that I'm from New York and pull back his affection. He didn't look at me and think, "You're from America, where my heritage is so scary to you that I'm not allowed on your land. America, where I am a terrorist.  Got it. I'll be on my way now." 

He didn't hold the sins of my country against me, even while my country holds his nationality against him. 

He chose abundance, even in a time of scarcity. 

He chose to be the bridge, not the wall.  An example of what I want my life to be. 

"Welcome.  You are welcome here."

His voice echoes in my heart. May in reverberate out of my soul, wherever I find my on this planet. 

Walking through Life

New York City was made for pedestrians. By design, the city was built for walking. From cars not being allowed to turn right on red, to entire sections of street traffic being diverted for designated public spaces, to a greenway wrapping the island top to bottom – walking was the forethought in planning this city.

When you think about traffic and parking, even if you don't care about the environment, walking just makes the most sense. I can say that with some authority in that I have lived here for over ten years and owned a car until recently. After years of using my lunch breaks to move my car from one side of the street to the other, I decided that my best bet was to buy a vespa, use the subway, and get by on my own two feet. Depending on the weather and the distance, I can get wherever I need at any time.

All things considered, if I can walk somewhere, I do. I walk everywhere even if it means adding hours to a simple errand. I can get anywhere in this city with decent weather, solid shoes, and a fully charged phone.

Walking is more than mere convenience. It gives me the space to reflect, to work through whatever is in my head, step by step.

I can't remember if I loved walking before I moved to New York, but I know that it's such an integral part of my life now that I have to intentionally find ways to walk when i'm not in the city.

At some point (the timeline is a little blurry) I decided that I wanted to walk the NYC Marathon. It took some planning, some might say conniving, but I finally found a way to get a bib for the 2016 marathon.

Having never competed in a marathon before, I didn't know what to expect. I had friends that could give me advice on how to run a marathon, but no one knew how to prepare me to walk for 26.2 miles in one stretch. In fact, when the subject came up with friends in passing most people tried to discourage me from even attempting. I heard every reason as to why my idea was ill-conceived, but as with most everything else in my life, I have zero interest in entertaining the voices that want to discourage me.

My intent was not to physically challenge myself. My goal was to push myself mentally. It was a deliberate choice to put myself in a situation that demanded full mental attention with no ability to escape. It was the work of the warrior.

I wanted that challenge.

I wanted those lessons.

Usually it takes me weeks, sometimes months, to reflect on life and absorb the lessons I have learned along the way. I'm a slow processor - proudly so, but this experience was different. Over the course of the eight hours that it took from start to finish, I very clearly realized the lessons waiting for me in my walk. With startling clarity I articulated this very blog to my sister when I was still walking through Queens.

For me, that walk felt like an embodiment of what my life has been so far – walking with people and walking at my own pace.

Let me explain...

Walking with people - I only told a handful of people about my plan, only inviting a few on the journey with me. I don't need many people in my life, just a handful of people that I really love. It was this handful that shared my journey with me.

Some of this handful, my handful that live in New York, walked with me along the way.  Literally.  My closest friends in this city met me as I walked through the boroughs, walking actual miles by my side. I had friends that planned their entire days around meeting me, around walking with me. In my life these very people walk next to me every day, sharing all the highs and lows.

My family and friends that live too far to meet me on the street checked in on me along the way, calling and texting as the day went on, letting me know that I wasn't alone as I walked.

There were spurts where I was completely alone, others where I walked side by side with my closest friends, and others where technology connected me to the faces in my life that I couldn't physically see - a balance of my daily routine, just like life.

I couldn't help but think about the people that I have shared my life with, even for a season. I thought about people that I walked next to in my childhood, in my teenage years, and into adulthood. I haven't talked to some of them in over a decade. I talk to some of them regularly. I thought about people that I've reconnected with after years of silence, about people that have recently moved out of the city and that I barely talk to anymore, about the ones that I have walked next to for the past 34 years without a break in stride. Regardless of how I interact with them today, I wouldn't be where I am without them, without the clip we walked together.

And for those people in my life, I am the one walking next to them in their races, whether in the past or present. I am a piece of their story, not just my own.

The point is this – we're all walking with each other, maybe for a season, maybe for life. Some of us were meant for the long haul, others for a New York minute. Either way, we are all meant for each other, for this tangled mess of relationships in the journey.

I'm happier when I walk with a select few, an intentional handful.

I always knew that to be true, but walking through the boroughs with the different faces in my life, with constant reminders of their presence making my phone ding, was the physical representation of my walk through life.

Walking at my own pace – I'm not a typical 34 year old, not even for a New Yorker. I've never heard the same drummer that my peers hear, not the ones I grew up with and not the ones that drive the rhythm of this city.

I walk my own path. I always have.

As I walked through NYC with 50,000 people running past me, I felt the truth of that reality.

I felt like I was walking through my life, start to finish, exactly as I have always walked – with my own vision, my own goals.

The rest of the world was competing, whether with themselves or with the person next to them. Not me. I had my own definition of victory. I wanted to walk every step, meditatively and intentionally, until the end. I mentally prepared myself for months and I was ready when the day came.

The struggle I had, just as in life, was in not justifying myself to the other runners - to the crowd.

Everyone was cheering for me, telling me, “You can do it! Don't give up!”, as if walking was indicative of defeat. As if I needed to be reminded to run, because that's what I was supposed to do.

I had to fight the urge to explain myself. I wanted to stop and tell every well-meaning person on the side, “Thanks for the encouragement, but the thing is - I'm not taking a break from running, I'm walking on purpose.”

My inclination was to turn to everyone and explain myself, just like life.

“No, I don't want kids. The thing is...”

“I'm ok with not being married. The thing is...”

“My five year plan? I'm content doing exactly what I'm doing for the rest of my life. The thing is...”

I have to fight the urge to explain myself every day.

The thing is, I know what path I'm on. It's not the same path as everyone else. I don't need to explain that to anyone.

My people, my handfull, they know. They know my story, they know my past, they know my dreams, they know my business. They walk with me along the way.

I don't need to validate my existence to the millions of people racing past me or to the ones on the sideline. I have to fight that urge every day.

I finished that race on my own terms, having completed my own goals in the journey.

By the time I made it back to Manhattan the race had completely shut down. Water stations had been disbanded. Pacing machines were removed. Onlookers had gone home.

I walked every step, even the final ones, without running one step.

I crossed the finish line with a few geriatric runners and injured competitors. There was no fanfare, no cheering fans, and no one waiting for me.

It was just me. I stepped across that line with so much pride in what I had done and with a renewed sense of confidence to be exactly who I am, to keep walking my own path at my own pace.

As I type this, my bags are packed for my next trip, the next chapter in my book. I leave for the Netherlands this afternoon to work with Afghani refugees.

For a brief window, in the middle of July, I will have the privilege of walking next to a group of young people that have more life experience in their 15 years than I ever hope to know. A group of people that will, no doubt, forever change my stride. I will go with the support of my handful, never truly being alone along the way.

For a brief window, in the middle of July, I will give my all of my time, resources, energy, and expertise to a group of people that have been despised in the West. Part of me will feel the need to defend myself, to defend my decisions, to every raised eyebrow along the way.

For a brief window, in the middle of July, I will walk another marathon. And I will remember what I was meant to learn in the first one, perhaps for such a moment as this.

I will remember the people that I walk with and I won't defend my pace to anyone.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for walking with me.

Building a brain

It's the night before I start my eleventh year of teaching.

I should be be in my bed. I should be sleeping.

The thing is, I get anxious about things. Anxious about almost everything.

I get anxious to go back to school. I get anxious when we have a week off. I get anxious for summer vacation. I get anxious to travel. I get anxious when I have too much to do. I get anxious when I don't have enough to do.

It's an internal angst that gnaws at my insides for days, sometimes weeks, as change approaches.

It's something that I've come to understand about myself, something that I've been able to identify over the years.

So here I sit, unable to fully rest, knowing that I'll regret the missed hours of sleep when my alarm goes off in the morning, unable to do much about any of it in the present moment.

And in this moment, with nothing but quiet and time to fill the space, I find myself reflecting on my time in Nairobi.

Once BuildaBridge arrived I moved out of my host home and across town. I had been staying within walking distance of the school, but soon found myself on the other side of the city. The distance between where we were staying and where we were working was probably about 15 miles, give or take, but the commute was at least an hour both ways. 

Driving in Kenya is no joke.  

I prefer my vespa in New York.  Taxis and all.

This car ride put me in a shared, confined space with some of the people on this planet that I respect the most. When we weren't fearing for our lives or gasping for air, we were engaged in conversations that I will keep in my pocket for the rest of my life.

I can say that with confidence, because I've been keeping conversations from these very people in my pocket for the past six years.

One conversation that I'm marinating in tonight focused on trauma and overcoming and resiliency and the brain. We talked about how the brain physically changes when in the presence of trauma, but it also physically changes in response to overcoming trauma.

I pulled out my phone and started taking notes.

Overcoming changes the brain in positive ways. The more you overcome, the more you internalize that you have the ability to overcome, which leads to greater resiliency and more confidence to overcome the next challenge.

I have thought about that ever since that moment.

I have thought about everything that I have ever overcome. I have thought about everything that I never thought I would be capable of doing, but did. I have thought about basic things that feel like tiny victories on a daily basis.

I have thought about my brain and how all of that has changed the structure of my brain, changed my psyche.

I don't often feel capable of overcoming the challenges that I face everyday.

I'm not talking about major issues concerning health and survival.

It's far less noticeable than that.

It's going to school for the first day after a two month break and seeing people that I haven't seen since June.

That's scary.

But you know what?

I've done it for the past ten years and I'll do it again tomorrow.

And all of the other pieces of my life, all of the other anxiety-inducing parts that keep me up at night? I'll face those, too.

I'll remember all of the tiny hurdles that I've already jumped. I'll remember that I have traveled to different countries for the past five years, lived in new places, and come home again.

In every fear faced, my brain changed.

It's stronger than I give it credit for. And so am I.

Maybe sometimes you have to travel the world and realize that you can live anywhere, just so that you can come home with the confidence to go to a job that you love more and more every day of your life.

Life is like that.

I should probably get some sleep.

Goodnight and thanks for traveling with me.

Until my next adventure...

Litter and life

Sometimes it feels like the problems in the world are so great, so vast, so beyond me, that there isn't a damn thing I can do to make a dent in the situation.

I feel like that all of the time.

These things are systemic and institutionalized.  

They're bigger than I am. They're stronger than I am. 

They mock my efforts and attempts at reversing what they have set into motion.

It makes me feel so small, so insignificant. 

One of the best examples I can think of is the problem of litter.  

It's a problem in Washington Heights, in that it makes our streets ugly and lowers the overall perception of the neighborhood.  In Nairobi, though, it's a way of life.  

Unless you're in the middle of the city you aren't going to find a trash can on the corner of the street. There isn't a system for waste removal on public roads beyond the most traversed neighborhoods of the city, so every other neighborhood drops their trash where it is convenient.  The streets are lined with garbage. 

I'm being literal. The streets are literally lined with garbage. 

I'm staying in a slum in Mathare where I can't see the ground where I'm walking because a layer of plastic separates me from the sewage beneath it. 

There are sections of the street set aside where people toss their garbage, should they choose to collect it in a bag to begin with. 

Tiny piles of trash burn along the edges of the walking paths, a futile attempt to eradicate the litter that can't be contained in one area.

I've lived here for the past two weeks.  I've collected my trash in a tiny plastic bag and I've given it to the woman that takes it out twice a week.  I haven't thought much about it beyond that.  I'm not throwing it out of the window, so it feels like I'm doing the right thing.  

And then it dawned on me - my trash is going the same place everyone else's trash is going.   It's part of the pile on the road. 

I can ignorantly collect it and pass it off in a sealed bag, but it's all going to the same pile. 

I don't throw my waste out of the window, so I assume that I'm not littering.  

It's not that easy. 

Unless I collect my own trash and take it to a public waste can, I might as well pitch it out of the window. It's the same exact result. 

I can convince myself that I'm doing my part by gathering my waste in a bag, and I might sleep more soundly at night because of it, but it's just ignorance that lets me rest. 

The truth is that there is so much more than I'm responsible for, so much more that I need to be aware of in order to actually be a part of the solution. 

Anything less is the same as adding to the piles of trash that make me hold my breath when I walk the streets. 

These things are systemic and institutionalized.  

It's bigger than trash.  It's life.

If I don't see the big picture and my role in it, I'm contributing to the problem. 

My work in the world can't end with a tidy bag of my own waste and a clean conscience because I don't openly throw it on the road. My work needs to look at developing systems that address the core issues, not just making sure that I put some volunteer time in.  My work needs to be about sustainable programming that meets the needs of the community, not just teaching a class for a week or two.  Volunteering might help me sleep at night, but the pile of trash is growing and I see my wrappers on the street.  

I might not be able to take care of these problems.  They might always be bigger than I am. They might always be stronger. 

But If I can see them for what they are then I can work to disarm them.

And I sure as hell won't convince myself that I've done something good for the world in order to get a better night of sleep when all I've done was litter in a different way than my neighbors.  

New eyes

The first time that I saw poverty, I mean true poverty, the kind of poverty that takes the air out of your lungs, was when I went to the Dominican Republic in 2012.  The kind of poverty where hungry, naked, thirsty, and roofless are accepted normals for daily life.  The kind of poverty that hasn't begun to think about infrastructure, waste disposal, or sanitary needs because they are all further below on the hierarchy of needs - not enough mental and emotional space to give to anything but meeting the most basic survival needs.

I remember pulling up to the Bateye and seeing tiny people waiting for our arrival, waiting for the education we had come to provide.  Some without shoes.  Some without clothing.  All with empty stomachs. 

It put my world on pause.  I had to create space to process.  I had to figure some things out. 

A month later, after I had been in that exact environment for a month, I expected to see the very things that had initially been so jarring. 

I don't mean to suggest that I was desensitized to abject poverty.  My heart still bled at the sight of naked babies sleeping on a cement floor, children eating rationed spoonfuls of rice for entire meals, hair that had turned orange from a lack of proper nutrients, and humans living as slaves right before my eyes. All of that still pricked my heart, but it didn't cause such pause in my world as to alter my entire state of being.

From that time on, I had a better framework for what to expect when traveling to places of crisis and poverty.  Still, every time I saw a new community for the first time I had an initial moment of hesitation at first sight.  The time it takes to process the new information lessens significantly in every new context, but it is always startling at the onset. 

So here I am, living in Mathare, a slum on the eastern edge of Nairobi, working in Kibera, a slum on the city's southern edge.  

Trash covers the ground.  Everywhere.  Layers and layers of garbage blanket the soil.

Houses of mud and corrugated iron define the horizon line. 

Sewage runs congruently with walking paths. You can't imagine the smell. You can't. 

Kids play openly in their environment, wrestling and chasing one another through the trash and sewage.  

It's poverty as I've never seen, besides when I was here the last time. 

I knew what i was going to see and smell and touch and experience. I knew what I was getting into. I knew what to expect. Still, it's shocking to the point of causing pause. 

Every morning when I walk out into the community, I am more and more prepared to see the world that's waiting.

It's adaptation for the purpose of survival, I suppose, because I don't think that I could emotionally function with an openly bleeding heart for such an extended period of time. 

Initially it startles, then I process it, then I prepare myself, then it becomes routine.  

As I reflect on that aspect of my own being, I start to think about my own community. After all, if none of this helps me love my neighborhood better then I have no point being here.  

So I think about New York, about Washington Heights, about my school, and I wonder how I would see all of those places with new eyes, with eyes that haven't processed the extreme poverty that I actually have been desensitized to.  

I wonder what you would see in my world. 

Would it startle you?  Would you notice all that I look passed on a daily basis?  Would your heart bleed where mine has mended itself?

I don't know.  

Ten years of adaptation can alter a person's framework. 

Having new eyes every summer reminds me that it's not too late to see the world again, to refocus my vision.

There's a fine line between the kind of empathy that promotes solidarity and the kind that leads to emotional breakdown, so I want to make sure that I am deliberate. Always deliberate. 

But I think that it might be healthy to be shocked again, to feel the need for pause in the city that I love so dearly.  

New eyes.  

It's so clear when it's new.  So clear that I can't help but think of how foggy my vision must be. 

I guess there are some things that I never want to get used to seeing. 

I am.

I don't know if anyone has noticed or not, but it's an election year.

Election season for me means annoying social media posts, signs in yards, bumper stickers on cars, interns on street corners, divisive conversations, and higher quality Saturday Night Live skits. 

It also means the celebration of a government by the people.  I'm not sure that's as dependable as high quality Saturday Night Live skits and I'm pretty sure Bernie would agree with me.  Maybe it means the celebration of an idea, which is a government that was originally intended to be for the people. 

I digress. 

The point of this specific blog is to confess some aspects of my character that I have noticed through the overlap of world travel and the current election season. 

Election years make it really easy for me to identify people that I want nothing to do with. Put a sign in your front yard with a certain name on and I'll instantly know that we could never be friends.  

I know, in my head, that the sum of an entire human cannot be contained in the endorsement of a candidate. But damn, it's so easy to do that.  

Especially this year. Every endorsement feels like a proverbial wall giving me permission to actively stay on my side of the partition. Attach yourself to a specific candidate and I've given myself permission to write you off. 

I can rationalize it pretty easily.  

I teach in a community of students that are first generation Spanish speaking immigrants. I've spent years working towards helping my kids get citizenship before their 18th birthdays. I've walked that road with them. I know their stories. I'm part of their stories. 

I'm also a woman. And I have a radical idea that my gender is equal to other humans that have different genitals. 

Additionally, I work really hard to use the privilege I was born with, based on skin color, in order to level the playing field for my brothers and sisters that were born into a world of ignorant racism. 

A few more - I think that wealth and resources are to be shared. I think wisdom rests in the most lowly, most disregarded in a society.  I think leaders are meant to serve.  I'm a pacifist that believes in subversive opposition to systems of oppression. 

See? Easy. 

You stay on your side. I'll stay on mine. 

There's just one problem with the ease at which I segregate people of differing viewpoints from myself - It doesn't align with my own value system. 

I operate under the premise that we all have more in common than not.  I go across the globe and see entire cultures that live in a world with no resemblance to my own. 

Politics, culture, worldview, gender roles, societal norms, agriculture, cuisine, rituals - all different. 

The first thing I see, regardless of where I find myself, is all that we have in common.  

Love of family, desire for community, appreciation for celebration, need for expression, respect for the sacred, disdain for disgust. All the same. 

See?  Easy. 

I can spend a month with a group of people, living and laughing and learning one another, to the point that I feel eternally connected.  I feel really good about the world when I think about that, about how we are all so much more alike than any of us realize. 

That's beautiful to me. I want more of that. 

I can live on the same block as someone that I will intentionally avoid meeting based on the sign they have in their window.  I feel really good about myself when I think about that, about how I can write someone off so easily, dismissing them as humans because I think that they are ignorant.

That's abhorrent to me. I don't even want to admit it. 

But, it's true. 

It's true and I need to admit it. I need to say it. I need to address it. I need to weed it out of the garden of my soul. 

I want to see people.  Whole people.  Entire beings. I want to find all that connects me to them, all that we have in common and let that be my starting point. 

No labels.  No branding. No generalizations.  No categories.  No affiliations. 

Just human. 

I have to work on that. 

If I don't, I'm just adding to the problem. I'm just adding to the "us vs. them" world that I actively work to piece back together. 

The problem, I suppose, is that I don't want to have anything in common with these people.  I want to arrogantly state how ignorant they are and how different I am because of that. 

And I guess, that makes me the problem.  

I am the problem. 

It's an odd revelation to have, especially when I'm walking through Kibera, the largest slum in all of Africa, and actively seeing every commonality between myself and the people living here. 

But if I can't do it at home, what's the point of being here at all?

I have to work on that. 

I suppose if I do, if I work on that, I can be the solution, too.