Sunrise…Sunset: Not Missing Snow, Wind, and Weather
I’ve come to a stage in life that I don’t feel guilty missing hardships. I can’t determine if that is progress or regression. Sometimes I ask what my 20-year-old-self would say. She was more certain about things, about the need to experience what others in difficult circumstances experienced. She sought out challenges, wrote about them, shared the talents she had to try to find remedies. How would she feel living in a lovely new condo in Florida while those she knew and didn’t know suffered the worst storms in decades? She lived through the 1996 blizzards in Washington, DC though she was in her forties then. In her twenties she went into the inner cities and worked and tutored. She is still in contact with one family she tutored and got to know. They taught her more than she taught them.
As a writer, I’ve always wanted to know experiences I haven’t lived. I wanted to understand people from all backgrounds and races and economic conditions and cultures. I have been privileged to have lived in many places and to have traveled with outstanding organizations who help on the ground in exogenous regions and parts of the world—with CARE, Save the Children, the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, PEN International, Refugees International. In large part, I’ve worked at the governance level and occasionally on the ground in the communities. I’ve been able to contribute financially and to share by writing the experiences I’ve witnessed. But none of that is the most challenging work.
I have been given far more than I have given because I have been given experience and friendship and an expanding point of view. Part of what I’ve learned is that I can’t solve the multiple problems of the world, but I can be a small part of a greater effort to connect. The real connection begins in the heart by recognizing the universal that connects us all.
Over the decades I let go of some of the guilt and replaced it with gratitude and have learned to enjoy the moments and to share them when I can, though I am still not certain what my 20-year-old self would say.
