Lately, I've been feeling my age. I haven't been feeling it actually, I've been obsessing over it. It's the kind of thing that just pops into my mind every so often, the number, just to remind me that while I've been busy hesitating, regretting and otherwise bumbling through life, time is passing. Logically, I understand this year's number is not especially grand nor a milestone of any kind, but still, it is cause for anxiety.
I've created a mental list of all the things I've accomplished, things I've set out to do and actually completed. It's a fine list. But when I glance at my hands, long and slender and unadorned, I see the cause for what it is, and so find it easier to revert to something mundane and trite- a number.
With all new years, with all great change, reflection is unavoidable. I have been caught deep and strong in its grasp. It has been a vivid and visual review not unlike what I imagine death will be- a painful scrutiny of decisions cast and the repercussions that followed.
This journey, however, takes place under the hot and healing sun of Africa. Here, I do have strength to see it all with unclouded vision. I am no longer bent with my burdens but able to stand and bear their weight.
Every day I praise Allah for the sunshine, it is an easy thing to do. It happens almost without conscious thought. Even after these six months, it is nearly every minute that I am thinking,
'Masha'allah, God has given us another beautiful day.'
Because it is truly a blessing that it doesn't snow in Africa. I cannot imagine the horrors. But as Russia and Ukraine make the news yet again in a conflict over gas supplies, I do imagine. I remember when I first began to write here, one month shy of a year ago. I remember a story I heard on npr. I clearly recall walking into the teacher's room at school, running into a colleague and being compelled to ask, "It's not ending is it? The world, it's not ending, right?"
(feb 13, 08 post)
Though she assured me it wasn't, I felt only marginally convinced. It was the story of a woman who had put her baby to sleep and found her dead, frozen to death, by morning. It was more than that story, but it was that one that left my head spinning and my feet moving only along predetermined pathways of desire.
The story is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18784716
It had such an effect on me, I am able to find it a year later. Because as I was absorbing the crisis in Congo, I was also absorbing the fact that Congo is not alone. "Headlines from DRC" could easily be "Headlines from Tajikistan." How can I get someone to care about congo when there is such a long list of countries that require no capital? It is too easy to invite apathy when the list is never ending, when it is self-repeating, when it seems without solutions. It is too easy to be indifferent when the story is about no one you know and everyone you don't.
