I like learning, but there are some things that are emotionally taxing to learn.
Like a whole class on Modern Day Slavery.
Thanks UT, right? It is amazing that they provide a class on this topic for students of all levels.
We, the students, get to read books, watch movies, research product supply chains, and hold debates over this topic. It's a lot of fun, but at the end of the day, I'm noticing patterns that tell me I'm in a bit of an emotional bind. At first I thought it was just me, being sloppy, lazy, unhealthy in some instances. And sure, I am all of those things sometimes (right, mom?), but not all the time.
Of course, I didn't exactly connect two and two until 3 weeks before the close of the semester. Saturday. I was sitting outside the Blanton Cafe waiting to meet with a woman who had been in the foreign service for many years. It was nice weather, and I enjoyed being outside. Then, in my head, I thought, "these are good things," as I looked at the leaves on the trees and the grass on the ground "this world has good in it."
That was it. I realized, after a few moments of wondering what had prompted such a response out of the blue when I wasn't focusing on being thankful or anything like that. I had been learning about a lot of bad. Sometime experience, also, makes me unconsciously expect bad. Slavery is bad. A generation of children born into HIV and AIDS is bad. A generation of loved children working in a way that Americans don't understand beyond feeling that the work they are made to do is awful. A professor who explains the headway Christians made in Civil Rights as merely fodder to their ego, and in some ways, I see that. I see people who want to ease their conscience, I do too, and what that takes is surprisingly little. So much pain. So much grief. I easily blame anything I can, and that is ugly.
Now that I know, coping with all the information is a goal. A prayer goal, Lord calm my heart and preserve my empathy. I don't want to be stuck at pity, I want to move with compassion. Compassion, con passion, I think of the Holy Week and your passion. I love you, I love that you are good and you were moved to the passion by your compassion on us. You have already defeated poverty and consumerism and trafficking.
I feel tender, just now, and I am fine with that. It doesn't matter what this does to me as long as some of it can be used for others.
