Oh you can’t get away from rhythm. You just can’t get away from it. The left hand shakes with the right hand, the inhale follows the exhale and systole talks back to the diastole, the hands play patty-cake and the feet dance with each other. And the seasons. And the stars, and all of that. And the tides, and all that junk. You’ve got to live at peace with it, because if it’s going to worry you, you’ll lose. It keeps on and on and on. Hell, we’ll never get away from rhythm
Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Those
of you who have been to DC any time in the past couple years probably remember
that I had this quote hanging above my
bed (see right). It’s one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books. The novel is about a middle aged man who goes to
Africa with vague ambitions to find the meaning of life, and manages to, in my
opinion, turn both Heart of Darkness and the “middle class white male who finds
his life unsatisfying” genre on their respective heads. I recommend it for the
story and language alike.
I
bring up because it’s another quote, like the one that provided the name for
this blog, that presents an attitude I try to carry with me through life, and
particularly when traveling. During
undergrad I shared it to help a friend who was adjusting to Uganda, telling her
that the developing world has its own unique rhythm, that one absolutely has to
learn to live at peace with, because if it worries you, you will absolutely
lose. . . you will not change the ambient rhythm with your dischordant way of
being, and you’ll possibly lose your own sense of order in the process. Rhythm is
beautiful, if you’re in the right frame of mind to hear it
Whenever
anyone asks about Cairo, I tell them that I loved it. She was messy, chaotic, and challenging, but
if you let her be whatever it is that she is (embracing her underlying rhythm
of life), she will teach you each and every day. You could probably say the
same for most cities..
Bringing
it back to the present, I’m getting ready to pick up several new beats. I’m off to Geneva, and then Juba. Which means I have to adjust to two places,
each with their own rhythms, and two different communities of Salesian sisters,
both of which are a little more in tune with each other than with their host
communities, but probably a few beats off nonetheless.
My
goal for these months, then, is to embrace and adopt the new rhythms, not let
them worry me, because the worrying and the losing will get in the way of what
I am trying to do in these next few months. . . to serve, and to learn, and to
grow. I won’t have time to waste in
either place, so my goal is to submit to the order and rhythm of things, resist
the urge to push against it, and save my energy for fully embracing the
experiences the next few months bring and being as useful as I can to the two
communities and the work they do.
I’ve
told many of my friends this, but there’s another reason why I’m looking
forward to learning to play in tune with my new homes. . . I will probably feel
differently about this in a few weeks, but towards the end of my time in DC, I
got tired of and increasingly bad at the little choices you have to make to get
through the day. . . what to get for lunch, which brand of rice to pick up from
Safeway, whether to go home before I go to the gym, whether to go to the gym at
all. I attribute it to my over-analytical tendencies gone awry, living on a
tighter budget, and maybe one or two too many econ courses that had me thinking
about maximum utility for time and money. Whatever the causes, it got exhausting, and
made convent life in Texas for training a breath of fresh air. Yes, at some point, I’ll want more of my
autonomy back, but for a few months, freeing up my energy for more critical
decisions, such as those I’ll need for my work in Geneva and the looming grad
school decision, will be a blessing.
Anyway,
those are my pre-departure musings. Now
time to figure out how to pack for this. Eesh.
Laura
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