Fear and Birds and Anchors and Trees

This is for everyone who moved around growing up, be it different houses, different states, different countries, different languages or different cultures.

For everyone who has begun to think of themselves as having no roots.

For those of us who have determined to keep a mobile life because we are too scared that if we hold onto something, someone or somewhere too tight, it will soon be swept away and added to the list of "been there"s and "done that"s.

For we who understand all too well that life is fleeting and all together too short to waste it being in one place, with one person, AS one person.

For all of us who have grown to be strong enough to never rely too much on other people and places, but in turn have sacrificed things like constancy, security and the beauty of certainty.

For all of us who have learned to cope with our homelessness by proclaiming to all of these faults that we don’t need those things. We are a different kind of person.

We don’t need roots. We have wings. 

To all you, I ask you this: what happens when you lose orientation? What happens when the wind and the rain beat your wings and you are not strong enough to fly above the clouds? What happens when the sharp wind takes you in a direction that would hurt you? What happens when the flow that we have learned to go with turns down the wrong path?

What happens when you realize that you are not immune to getting so shook up that you cannot get your bearing without a reference point?

Everyone needs something to hold on to that is not themselves and their own self-sufficiency. Everyone needs an anchor.

In this day and age, however, an anchor is seen as a bad thing. It is something that ties you down, and spoils your freedom. Today commitment and surety are almost seen as foolish dreams.

Everyone knows that isn’t realistic. You don’t know what life could throw at you. Best to not plan and not hope and not dream just so that if it doesn’t turn out like that it will be okay. Your crushed dreams won’t crush your spirit if you make a point of never actually believing in your dreams.

I have muttered the above statements countless times. Just last week in fact, I got upset because I was thinking about the future, maybe getting married and having kids, having a job and a house and a normal, American life. I simultaneously felt awe at the prospect of actually living in a house that I owned, and terrified of the prospect of staying in one place long enough to be able to lay claim to it. I longed for it with all my heart. And yet I was so terrified of being stuck in one place with one constant, repetitive life that I panicked. I was like a tree that didn’t want to be planted just in case it wanted to be transplanted later and it knew it wouldn’t survive. I didn’t care about the fact that in order to flourish you need to be well grounded. I wanted to just...run. Run until I was somewhere new around no one I knew and I wasn’t planning on knowing them longer than for just a moment. Run until I wasn’t making every movement with the thought of what this relationship would look like in ten years. Run until I knew I wasn’t attached to anything, and no one was following me.

And then do you know what? I felt more lonely and lost than I ever had in my life, just at the thought of leaving behind the people that I love the most. I thought about my family, already scattered across the continents, and how sad they would be to not be able to see me for even a few years at a time. I thought of my friendships, the new ones I have built at school with beautiful, strong people who live the boring life of being safe and close to family and they love it, people who have never left the East Coast and they don’t mind. I thought of the old friendships, the ones that have stayed strong despite being stretched thousands and thousands of miles over the years. I think back to when I was a small girl and I felt lost and confused in a strange new country. It was my family’s happiness that kept me going. They were my motivation and my consolation.

They were my anchor. They held me steady. And when I had no idea what to do with my new life, I made it my goal to do whatever it took to make them happy.

So now I ask you, if you really did leave everything behind, what would you do and what would you do it for?

Because when you leave everything behind for fear that they will weigh you down, you end up forsaking your motivation. When you no longer seek to make your parents proud, or be able to give expensive gifts to your nephew or your friends, or your girlfriend, or have enough to provide for your own family one day or even just be able to hang out with people you trust, what motivation do you have left? Just yourself. Just you.

Alone.

That’s what it means to have no roots. That’s the price of being free as a bird.

Have you ever heard the saying that maybe the thing you’re most scared of is exactly what you should do?

Well, I’m scared of being stuck. Even if it’s a good kind of stuck. I’m scared of taking a step toward something beautiful, just in case it falls away and leaves me standing there, alone, reaching for nothing. I’m scared of committing to something I know is too good for me, because I am convinced in my heart that I don’t deserve to have something lasting.

I’m scared of making connections because I don’t want to break them.

And I’m terrified of having things because I don’t want to lose them.

It’s a scary thing to try what you’re most scared of. But maybe the strongest person is the person who is brave enough to try anyway, not the person who runs away because there is a fifty percent chance that it will fail.

Besides, even birds live in trees.

On Privilege and Right

There was a time when I believed that I only had the right to write about Uganda if I was there.  I believed with all my heart that if I left the country, anything I had to say was immediately disqualified or outdated. I would be just like those short-termers who think after three weeks at an orphanage in Kampala that they know all the secrets, all the problems and, sadly, all the answers.

I don’t want to be like that, I never did. I would be the first to tell you that I don’t know everything, least of all, all the answers. But more than that, by giving up the privilege of living among the unseen, I felt that I had given up the right to see them and make them seen. I did not have the right to write about them because to do so would be to claim that I know it all.

So I stopped writing.

Oh, what a colossal mistake!

I have a secret hope. A hope so loud, so strong and so passionate that I cannot suppress it. Yet a hope so grand, so unbelievable and so great that I know I have no right to hold onto it. Should I let this hope take hold of my outward life, its failure to bloom to reality would ruin more than I could bear. I could not bear the disappointment.

I do not believe I could succeed.

Well, maybe I could. But I won’t. My fear has made that certain. I have been shaken to the core in my vain search for purpose and I have lost my very feet. I have seen too much.

Do you, whoever you are, want to know the truth? The truth is I would give everything to be more than just a voice for the martyrs. I would take their place in a heartbeat. What is the point of painting a picture of the sorrow and the loss and the immense degradation of others if no steps towards alleviation are made? The hungry don’t need the public humiliation of advertisement. They need love.

Well I have love, just not in the capacity that my first world background has told me that I need in order to reach those that tug at every square inch of my heart. When distance stretches the heart to its limits, the world tells you that the only thing that will alleviate the pain is money. Donate to this charity. Pour your money into the pocket of one you have to blindly trust is supporting the same cause that you are. Give others the ability to serve by paying their airfare. Trust that their love will be enough for your two hearts.

Oh what a fool is he who believes that the love you pour into those gestures will reach those you truly want to touch. I donated a dollar to Samaritans purse. But that didn’t pull Papa Nikinyom back from death’s door. Maria Alenga died more alone than the day she was born. What about Loduk? And Aleper? And Regina? What did I do for them? Friend after friend disappeared from my life and I could do nothing to stop it.

The world told me that it was because I didn’t have enough money. And I believed it. If I had more, I could give more. I could pay their medical fees. I could stop them from being forced to drop out of school for lack of tuition. I could support their family so that poverty wouldn’t drive them to the alcoholism that would come to control their lives.

But I have no money. In that way I am a lost as they are. They live day to day, but I have only to wait two more years before the staggering debt I owe for my education threatens me with my own poverty. What’s the difference?

The difference is that the world expects me to buck up and do my part. If I can’t support myself it’s my own fault. I don’t deserve a handout because I got myself into this by aiming for a goal I could never reach. I was stupid. I should have tried harder.

No one would say that the poverty in Karamoja was the Karimojong’s fault. No one would look at the emaciation and malnutrition and scoff because the people weren’t smart enough to get a job that paid enough. These people didn’t settle. They were just dealt a difficult hand. So what can I do? Make them more like those who were born with privilege? Help them be ashamed of who they are? Is that love?

There are too many problems with no solutions. Too many questions with no answers. Too many broken hearts that stubbornly refuse to heal. Too any yearning, faithful cries with confusing, unjust responses.

And what can I do about it?

Because I am who I am, I got to chose what to do with my life and that is my advantage. I have a choice and if I chose poverty, that is my fault. Whether I actually chose it or not doesn’t matter. I was born with the option of being educated and so there is a point in my life where I can chose to be well salaried. If I do not chose well, I am stupid. People without the privilege of choosing curse the lifestyle that I have “chosen” because it will undoubtedly be their demise. That is heartbreaking.

Yet my secret hope is to be both well salaried and poor. Because voluntary poverty so that another can have the freedom to chose a better life is better than being rich because you got what you worked for.

My secret hope is to be proud of what I have in my bank account when it is too little and to be ashamed when it is too much.

My secret hope is to give as much as others have given to me. To not hold the meaningless advantages I was born with over another’s head. The valuable advantages I have I was given by those “under-privileged” souls that so blessed me by opening my eyes and my heart to them.

My secret hope is to open the eyes and the hearts of everyone I meet. To tell the world where I am from, to show them how small I am, how insignificant, how unable I am to do anything of worth, and hope that they will learn that even though one perspective has crippled me, I am strong enough to look, to see, to remember and to love.

I claim no wisdom. I have no answers. I know nothing that others cannot know, I have seen nothing that others cannot see, I have felt nothing that others too cannot feel.  Yet I do have one great advantage. My eyes have been opened and my heart has been touched. And so, this I share with you: look, listen, feel, do not open your mouth, and live.