vision

I just read the most fantastic essay in a book that I've been putting down and picking up for longer than I'd like to admit. Drakulic talks about this idea that we grow up in an area, and once a move occurs, our eyes catch certain things. Our ability to focus in on experiences and choose what is important and what is irrelevant is so natural, and yet so immature. We look back on friendships, trips, words, fights, homework assignments, dreams and pick out what is conveniently obvious.

Drakulic was able to always point our poverty and extra food in the garbage based upon her experiences of communism and remembering that America was promised to be clean and perfect. Instead of the picture, she was faced with scenes of homeless people calling out for quarters and old McDonald's burgers going to waste. All those years of waiting for the ideal were crushed because she naturally looked for what was wrong without even thinking. How unfortunate to grow up and live in a way expecting bad to come, and always knowing that the transition out of habit would never fully be complete.

New volunteers have joined Dnepropetrovsk, and while we were chatting about our recent experiences, I pointed out that the only reason people here lose sight of what is important here is because they choose to see what is the worst. (Which reminds me that I had a fantastic idea to start the ultimate "two types of people" list - for example: those who choose to see the bad and those who choose to see the good, those who care about the future and those who care about the past).

Where was I? At my eyes, which only see what I want right now knowing that now it is more important to be smiling than it is to be waiting for the curve to get bigger.

Good luck to the new.