Day 47 Reflections

I’ve been in this town for about 12 days now and I’m finally getting comfortable with being here, totally transported from my life in Southern Manitoba to a place where I get to do what I’ve wanted to for so long, but doing it alone and in a strange and familiar place.  Part of that comfort, let me call it peace (I know I'm at peace when I can listen to Sparklehorse without becoming melancholy), comes from getting the hang of my job, becoming a bit more autonomous and feeling like I’m getting something done.  On my contract I’m called a consultant, which is flattering, but not at all the case.  I’m a student.  I know nothing and I’m here to learn.  How many times have I been reminded since I attended the calling of the engineer ceremony nearly 3 years ago that I know nothing?  But I’m also learning and I continue to learn.  I will start to worry when I stop learning.

 

Sometimes I have the sensation of being transported to a high place where I can look back on parts of my life to places I’ve been and see them in a different light.  Sometimes a novel takes me to that place, an especially good novel.  And sometimes an experience does that for me; this is the case now.  What I’m looking back at is North America, a place I’ve become much better acquainted with over the last 8 years.  I see the order and ease and cleanliness and insurance of my own society.  And I see it as a bubble floating, oblivious, above the rest of the world.  Everything we take fore granted in our “civilized” societies is anomalous; it's not normal or common.  We’ve hoarded a huge percentage of the earth’s resources and have constructed a haven for ourselves and we live in it and think that it is normalcy or that we’ve earned it; it is completely justified in our mind, we believe the lie that it's sustainable, that it will keep on getting better.  Without tearing myself out of that context, I’m caught up in the same illusion. As soon as I go back in December I’ll slip right back into it, too ready to complain about violations of my rights, my small paycheck, long waits for healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, corrupt and ineffective government – not having a clue what I’m talking about.

 

So here I am in Gilgit and the Northern Areas, getting a feel (again) for what most of the world knows as life.  In ignorance and with more than a hint of arrogance, I wonder how these people can bear to live like this, in such isolation, in such small spaces of the world with so little.  A foreigner I met here, well meaning, having given up a significant income in his own country, said, “If only they’d change their worldview, they’d be able to get the same comforts that we enjoy in [my country].”  I’m guilty of the same kind of patronizing simplification in my own mind.  It’s we who need to change our worldview.

 

One reason why I feel the urge (an urge that is quickly being solidified as I spend more time here) to work in this part  of the world longer term is to keep a more balanced perspective of the world; this is a selfish reason, I’m aware.  I have other reasons, but this one keeps coming back to mind.

 

If you read my blog regularly you will quickly point out a contradiction in my thinking: on the one hand I say that to survive here I need to be pampered and on the other I look back at my compatriots and criticize them for an insulated outlook on the world.  I don’t deny this problem.  I hope that one of the things I continue to learn is how to live as a rich person of privilege in this place or another that’s part of the rest of the world. 

 

In saying the things I’ve said I don’t want to discount the reality and the hardship experienced by too many people in my own country, people we treat with as much indifference as the poor across the world we’ve never seen and whose presence we don’t really feel.  Experiences similar to mine are to be had not three hours’ drive from my hometown.