In short, there's no way to hide your values. Be prepared to live with them or don't have them at all.
Today marks the 5th year that I have been in Indonesia. I arrived in the morning on January 20 after 3 days of travel time; two layovers of 11.5 hours lengthened the trip, but on the first, I was able to wander around Frankfurt, Germany's historic district and that was a good thing.
I've been trying to think of what to say about these 5 years for a while and I honestly don't know. There's too much and I constantly sift out anything remotely negative.
Growing up in the South, there was never a shortage of "outsiders" complaining about it. "Why is everything closed on Sunday??" "You don't have any good music here" "Why are there no bagels anywhere?" "Why do you talk like that?" "None of you people are really educated..." "The South is so backwards"
In addition to fighting off self-loathing and questioning the validity of such negativity, the easiest thing to do was to say "Well, if you don't like it, leave." "The road that brought you here will take you back." "Don't let the screen door hit you where the good Lord split you"
As soon as I was old enough and able, I returned to the city of my birth to reclaim "my territory", but even there the questions to determine the validity of such came in the loaded question "where'd you go to high school?"
It would be easy, then, to say that I've never really felt like a had a place, so I don't feel much more out of place here than anywhere, but one thing's for sure: life just ain't the same when you can't just blend into the crowd. I have a brand new awareness for what it means to stand out based on skin color alone. Anybody who doesn't think that microaggressions and assumptions deny human dignity has never experienced it - it doesn't have to be mean, it's just that nothing needs to be discussed or understood because everybody already knows (and by that I mean they THINK they know)
What happens in the US happens all over the world, I'm sure. It's the same, but different. If I go on about that any longer I'll be writing a chapter of the book I should write and not just a blog post, so I'll leave it at that.
Over the past 5 years, I've been faced with opportunities and challenges to live my faith, test my values, and remember who I am.
My five year reflection is as follows:
- living in accord with values is not easy
- nothing makes you know who you are faster than knowing who you're not
- no matter where you go, there you are
The American values of hard work, perseverance, freedom, independence, and honesty may very well be a recipe for disaster outside the American context, but I guess I'll find that out when the time comes. Right now, I'll just keep on keeping on in faith and with love, as best I can.
There's a city in my mind
Come on and take that ride
It's all right
Road to Nowhere - Talking Heads
