A Privileged Position

Privilege is a touchy subject. Oftentimes, it can be relative and dependent upon the players involved. Sometimes it even just depends on where they are.

I don't consider myself privileged. I'm not working, i.e. not rolling in money. I'm a woman and that is only beneficial if it's attached to a role I would play, namely as a spouse or a mother. I'm not in my own territory (country), so I can't say anything, or at least I have to be very careful, about sharing things that I may feel, believe or presume. I'm not a member of any majority group (unless you count Arema supporters, arguably the best local soccer club in Indonesia - woo - may catch it on that one!) In short, I don't feel very privileged.



How I feel, however, and what I say really doesn't matter, because the fact is, I am privileged. Just because of my skin color and my nationality I have unearned privilege. It doesn't mean people will like me, help me, or listen to me, but when most people see me, they think I have money and sometimes even that I'm luckier than they are because I'm a foreigner and I'm somehow "special".

It seems that some people with such perceived privilege come and eat that up. They enjoy the extra attention. They enjoy being able to say things authoritatively and actually just being paid attention to.

I don't like it. I don't want to be treated differently. I don't like to be with Indonesian friends who are waited on after me or who are treated as if they were my hired help. Yep, I don't like it one bit.

And when I don't like things do you know what I can do? I can say something (already touched on how that may work out) or I can go back to the US. And that is privilege. Whenever anything happens that I don't like or agree with, I can go home.

And sometimes I think that's one reason why I haven't gone home ... yet. Not only because I don't want to flaunt that privilege, but more than that, I don't want to reinforce the stereotype that foreigners just come here to see what they can get and then leave. That's not OK.

When I came here, I made a commitment. Not to stay as long as it was fun. Not to stay as long as I was making BIG bucks. Not to stay and try to save the world. And most of all, not to take advantage of an economic system that would allow me to live a life much more luxurious than I could live in the US. I don't think that's cool.

My commitment was to come here...and to be here. Be here. Not DO here. Be here. That's hard.

I've joined a group of Indonesian English teachers on Facebook. I love the exchange of ideas, the thoughtful input from friends who teach, and even the affirmation that things I've noticed really happen.

That being said, it's hard not to have some pretty concrete ideas concerning the ills of the education system here. I like to share, but not to bash or judge, because it's really not my place. Additionally, from all I've been reading lately, the state of public education in the US is in the tanks, so I have no business saying anything about anybody else's system. There are a couple of native speaker teachers, however, who have shared too freely and have raised the ire of some of the members of the group. They were speaking from an assumed position of privilege.

Privilege is a touchy subject.

Being a teacher here affords an elevated status. Being a native speaking English teacher? Well, that's even a notch higher. Being a male, native speaking English teacher? Well, that seems to hit the jack pot!

Teachers are expected to have the answer. All the time. I was once advised by a very smart college professor here that if I don't know the answer, just give it my best shot. The students expect me to know and I can't seem to be uncertain about something or they'll lose confidence in me.

So, there's pressure to step into that place of privilege and "play the part", but for some of us, we know what a slippery slope that is.

I don't want to do it. I won't do it. I just hope that I'll know what to do when I need to.

And I hope that it'll be the best thing possible for someone in such a state of privileged flux to do.

Home is Where the Heart Is

I haven't been back to the US in almost 3 years.

When I came here, I had no idea that would happen, but it did and here I am.

At the beginning of August, I moved to my favorite place in Indonesia, Malang. It's beautiful here, that's for sure.

 

But beauty alone doesn't make a place a home. I come from a beautiful place and am thankful that it's my point of origin, but what really makes or breaks a place are the people, the civic culture and the most important of all, the feeling it gives me.

I've been to many beautiful places around the world; Brazil, England, Germany, Greece, Japan, Virgin Islands, Mexico, Canada, Singapore, but only a few give me that deep-down, full-hearted love rush. Other than NC? France in 1986 and Costa Rica in 2007.

Malang in 2013.

I first came here in December of 2011. Even then, I felt a peace unknown to me for many months. This is a wonderful place. I can feel it.

North Carolina is my home. It's where I'm from. Malang is my home. It's where I'm going to be. At least for now.

My heart? It's with me. And it knows where we're happy.

Be Happy

I love Facebook. I really do.

Maybe it's because my friends are so diverse...maybe it's because I get to learn so many new cool things that my smart friends post, laugh at the things my humorous friends, post...

Today there was a post from a page that focuses on how to make a better life. The quote was something like "Change your thoughts and change the world".

If you can believe this, one commentator was really rather pissy about it. He said basically that if you're poor/abused/trafficked/exploited/working for no pay that it's impossible to change your thoughts and change the world. Did I say already that he was a bit pissy?

Now, I'm a bit of a Pollyanna-ist and I try my hardest to be happy, even whilst plopped in the middle of a streaming pile of poop, and I'll tell you this. If I couldn't control my mind and my thoughts and decide that I deserved to be happy, I'd still be in that big pile of poop. What "pissy" people miss when they respond so virulently to those quotes is that nobody EVER gets out of those situations and stays out if they have a defeatest attitude.

I would like to ask him and the others I've heard with a similar criticism of "happy thoughts" what dire situations their kind of thinking has saved them from. My guess is that the list would be sort.

Defeatest, victim thinking never wins. It may get a person through a battle, but it won't win the war. One thing I think that people who feel like that miss is that being happy does not in any way imply acceptance. A person can be happy and still mad as hell.  How?

Because they decide to be happy about what they can be happy about (breathing, an opportunity to make a difference, being able to walk, having an amazing child, etc.) and they use the good energy of gratitude to tirelessly and with great effort make the world better by being kind.

Jogging is good for health. I know that, but if you see me running, you better run, too because that means I'm being chased by a wild alien and an attack is eminent!

Just kidding, but bear with me.

How many joggers have you seen smiling and looking happy? When we pass them on the street, don't they usually have a face of pain and anguish? I respect joggers, but frankly, a jogger in action is no advertisement to jump on the road and run along, too.

Life can be like that. When I was little, our pastor was a dour man. He rarely smiled, and when he did, it seemed somehow cynical and rather cold. When our religious leaders are always so somber and even a bit cold, does it make other people want to join in and "get religious"? I have to guess a big no on that one.

Being happy doesn't mean to ignore the world's ills. It doesn't mean to live in a fantasy land where nothing bad ever happens, but what it means is that there's something more. There's something that can put a smile on our faces IN SPITE OF.

Hope. Love. Faith. Something.

The first thing we have to do is know that it's worth it. Life is worth it. The blessing of being here is worth it.
Being happy doesn't mean that you don't care.

It means the opposite. It means that you do care.

Life is hard enough. Our hearts don't have to be, too.

We don't have to love the ills of the world. We don't have to accept them, but...

...we have to love ourselves and others at least enough to not add to the list.

Something Borrowed, Something Blue (or "Something Lost (not stolen), Pure and True")

In my lifetime, I've lost many things and unfortunately, many things have also been stolen. There is a difference, you know, between losing something and something being stolen. The important thing to realize and the point of this post is that only objects can be both lost or stolen. Human beings can only be lost.

You may wonder why I'm writing about this. First of all, this, or something just like it, makes regular rounds on Facebook.

In the comment section, I posted this:

If you think that another human being is an object that can be stolen like a TV or a computer, then that's part of the problem. If he cheats on you/leaves you, either he's shit or you're shit. If he's shit, good. Glad to be rid of him. If you're shit, I guess you better change your ways. Let's stop vilifying the other woman and see things for how they are.Some people are bad, men and women. Some people are good, men and women. It's best to let the assholes go and focus on being the best WE can be and not worry about anything else.

I guess that doesn't sound like my usual, thoughtful self, but it does sound like my fast response self. 

In this forum, however, I'll begin with a few reminiscences.

When I was a child, I always carried a pocketbook (purse, bag, handbag). I began this habit, as best I remember, when I was in third grade. My first freak out over thinking I had lost something involved, you guessed it, a pocketbook. I thought I had left it at a pizza place where we stopped on the way home from my Grandparent's during Christmas...it had $5 in it too - I was a wreck. We quickly turned around and I got my purse...and my $5...I was fine.

The next trauma occurred not long after that, or before, not sure, although it didn't involve my pocketbook, but my favorite stuffed animals. I had left them in our broken down car - a broken axle coming home from Grandma's house, again. My father and brother enjoyed tormenting me by ensuring me that they would be gone by the time we retrieved the car the next day. I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe. Harmless play. Sure. But I digress. The next afternoon, the stuffed animals were there and I was thankful. And I also swore that I would NEVER go ANYWHERE with only my father and brother...again.

The most heart wrenching loss occurred in 1987. I lost everything I owned - Evan Picone shoe collection, amazing wardrobe (including a black wool cape I had worn in France and a full-length gray wool overcoat suitable for Downing Street), the little bit of jewelry I had left, and the most important to me, my collection of stuffed animals. It was not huge, but it was my monkey collection. I had a large orangutan my uncle had given me many years earlier, a chimpanzee baby with pacifier and a gorilla with beans in its paws to make them heavy and cool. There were a few more, but I can only remember those 3. I cried over them for years. Anytime I thought of them, I'd get depressed. Why did I lose them? I was evicted and thought I'd be able to return for them in the allotted time. I had no car. I never got back.

Sometimes loss is confused with stolen, but there's quite a difference. When things are stolen, more is gone than the object itself; when an object is stolen, trust is loss. Trust in your own ability to be responsible, trust that the world really isn't a bad place, and even trust in the people who you thought were friends. It's a nasty feeling.

The first act of thievery I experienced happened in when I was in middle school. Three "friends" I had invited over raided my mom's pocketbook, stole $14 and 3 rings from my jewelry box; gifts from my two grandmothers - all while I was in the kitchen making drinks for us in the heavy glasses with lettuce leaf relief. I got one of the rings back at school. Just took it off the finger of someone who swore it was her mother's. The other 2 rings and my childish trust? Gone.

As the years passed, more things were stolen, mostly due to my negligence; forgetting to lock my car, trusting the wrong person or people, not locking the adjoining door in my college suite because I thought my suite mate was my "friend", etc. With each stolen item, ring, book, piece of clothing, I vowed to be more careful, but what actually happened, I think in looking back, is that I was on my way to achieving a state of detachment - Buddhists believe it to be a necessity for happiness...

I'll never know whether my class ring, my diamond necklace and my family crest ring were lost or stolen. I believe both, but also sold. That's a story too long to tell here and there was much more lost than that jewelry, specifically trust.

I've lost more and more has been stolen than I have time or need to share, but I wanted to share these few stories because these are the losses that hit the hardest.

My point is very simply that objects can be stolen. Objects can be lost. Objects are just that. Objects.

Now back to the Facebook posting.

A human being can not be stolen like a pocketbook, ring or computer. If someone can be stolen, then they are considered to be nothing more than property. And are human beings property? Objects? No, they are not.

A human being can be LOST...maybe due to negligence, abuse, no communication, lack of respect or appreciation, the time is up, but stolen? No.

In closing, I just want to say that I don't like to hear about "people being stolen". Stolen jewelry, computers and clothes can't realize that they're not home anymore and return. Losing someone to someone else doesn't mean they've been stolen. They've been lost.

There are many things one can do when someone is lost. Blame someone else, blame yourself or the other, or blame anything....just BLAME. And be a victim while you're at it. The more pitiful the better.

I prefer to consider this option, however. When on the receiving end of a lost relationship, these two outlooks can make all the difference in moving forward healthily.

If there's a history of cheating, thank God that a lying, no-good-dog is out of your life and can bother someone else to death.  If it's a good person you wish you still had, accept the fact that you didn't take care of a precious gift and you lost it. Before either of these will work, though, you have to understand that human beings are not objects that can be stolen. If a person is unwilling to grasp that simple concept, then perhaps there may be a great deal of loss in the future.

Bathing with Pride

For those of you who have read my posts before, I think you know that one of my favorite things about Indonesia is the kamar mandi, or bathroom.

My kamar mandi

There are many reasons for this love. They are EASY to clean, you can splash water EVERYWHERE and they're SIMPLE. Finally, it's easy, easy, easy to leave one feeling much cleaner than when you went in. They're just great. The large structure to the left (bak mandi) holds clean water for washing and splashing. I've yet to see a house with piped in hot water. There are sometimes tanks, but the usual way is one temperature of water, one faucet. The scoops are to collect the water and throw it around. A kamar mandi functions like a large-scale birdbath with scoops. It is just awesome.

My new house is in the mountains. The water in the bak mandi is, more often than not, FREEZING. That's OK for a morning bath - very refreshing - but in the evening or early mornings (just when the sun is coming up) it is TOO cold for me. I often get happy on Saturday nights remembering that I allow myself hot water for my Sunday morning bath; I bathe around 5:30-6 for church. Hot water is pretty special. I don't want a big heater on my wall, so I boil a big kettle of water and put it in a big plastic basin. It's a pretty luxurious treat, really.

Today I've been piddling around the house; slept late and did some house work, dog walking , etc. In short, I delayed my bath until evening...and that's when the water is FREEZING and cold baths are not fun to me.

It's funny how the most simple events can be transformed into opportunities for spiritual growth.

I've always had to keep a tight rein on my pride. Well, I should take that back. I don't have to keep a tight rein, it's really simple. I don't feel ALLOWED to feel pride...it seems that if I'm ever proud of something, I lose it, it breaks or it's taken. I believe that humility is my only option and that replacing pride with gratitude is a surefire way of being able to keep things that are meaningful to me. Cultivating gratitude is MUCH better than nurturing pride!

And then it hit me...

I wasn't treating myself to one hot bath a week and lots of cold ones because I was grateful. I was doing that out of a sense of pride. I don't need warm water. I'm not a baby. I'm a strong independent woman. Warm water is for wussies (except at 6 in the morning on Sunday!)

The focus of our pride doesn't matter, what matters is that we have a sense of pride. Prideful feelings are bad, not the focus of those feelings.

So tonight, I had a warm bath. And it was awesome. I can have cold or warm, but no matter. Whichever I have is going to be because I'm grateful to have the option, not because I'm too strong to need such comforts.

You may be asking "But what about being proud that my kid makes good grades?" I would say, how about being grateful that your kid has the ability to make good grades? Proud of your home? How about being grateful that you have a job to buy such a nice house or enough time to keep it clean and take care of it?

Pride is a sneaky thing. Sometimes we think we're being grateful or we're being strong when we're really just being proud.

I love my kamar mandi. I love taking a bath (mandi). But even more than that, I am grateful that something I love has shown me something that I really don't love. And that is a false sense of pride.

I don't want to be proud. I want to cultivate gratitude. And sometimes all I need to remind me is a nice, warm bath.