I sometimes wonder what the point of a blog is. Should I only regale you with humorous stories about frivolous travels? Should I just publish word-vomit—my own inner musings about whatever topic happens to be banging around inside my head? I try to do neither. I try to have this “summer on my andirons” blog continue as I originally set out to, as described in my first blog post: a reminder of summer’s sun and summer’s work, of daily challenges, of my personal discovery of the world’s beauties, and of self-discovery. I hope this blog is a reflection in snapshots of my experiences, and not simply a verbose version of Facebook: an overly cheery show for the rest of the members of the social network. I try to express my personal ups and downs, my observations of daily life here in Spain, as well as any silly/profound/important/interesting tidbits that I think are worth sharing. I write lots about traveling, and lots about the fun of living abroad, because I am having a lot of fun! I’m having a great year, and I hope my blog reflects that—but I don’t want it to only be light, entertaining reading.
I was going to write a post about how wonderful it was to have two friends visit me—Linnaea last weekend, and Katelyn this weekend—and describe all the good times we had. And then, such a post seemed cheap and untimely by the fact that another dear friend is in Libya right now, and the wave of political protests that started 5 minutes from her house on Tuesday night that were met by violent suppression on Wednesday promises to bring even more violence to Libya, and although my friend in Libya is safe, hundreds of people have been shot by governmental troops.
What was I doing while Libyan security forces killed at least 50 people who were attending a funeral on Sunday morning? I was making pancakes. I was getting ready for a hike in the mountains on a gloriously sunny day.
Why do our everyday lives focus so entirely on ourselves? Why do I have to have a personal connection to a place to suddenly care? Injustices are being committed all over the world, and yet I have not done anything more than watch The Daily Show and skim the New York Times. Should I feel guilt about enjoying myself while others are dying? Should I feel guilt about the relatively privileged life I’ve led, which is mainly thanks to my parents’ extremely hard work, and thanks to the fact that I was born in a country where women are recognized as full human beings with rights to equal opportunities? These are old questions that certainly won’t be resolved with me, but this recent crisis has brought them to the front of my mind. If I didn’t have a friend in Libya right now, if I still didn’t know that Libya was actually located in Africa (a factoid learned from this friend during my freshman year at Linfield), would the recent news make me do anything more than giggle at Stephen Colbert’s jabs at Libya (or skip to time stamp 3:20 in this Daily Show clip to hear popular media’s take on Qaddafi)? Would I care?
And, while I was actually sitting at my table writing this blog, it turns out that Qaddafi has left the country, Benghazi (the city where my friend lives) is under the control of the Libyan people, but his mercenaries are bombing Tripoli (the capital city). Whew. I feel relieved.
WHAT? I was chiding myself for not feeling a more global empathy, and yet, as soon as I hear that my particular friend is out of danger, I turn my attention elsewhere. The plight of Tripoli doesn’t interest me nearly as much as the plight of Benghazi, and my attention isn’t even focused on most of Benghazi. Does this mean that I’m a callous person, that I have a limited attention span, or that I am doing my best to be a good person by focusing on the people that are closest to me and by helping the more distant others whenever possible? I hope it’s the third.
None of what is happening in the world changes the fact that I DID have a great time with Linnaea and Katelyn and that it WAS a gloriously sunny day yesterday. I will write soon about our adventures, because focusing on quality time with friends is important. The small things, like making rivers of delicious fresh-squeezed lemonade for a good friend, are the special things. I’ll write about all of that later, but for now, I’m working on my sense of global empathy, and I’m thinking about a friend who is a little farther away.
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