Processing the process

A boring title, I know.

Boring. Exactly what life has not been. I've alluded to a stressful month and with a few moments to spare (before I lose motivation and slump to the couch), I will do my best to describe what has been for me some of the hardest moment's of culture learning.

I feel I've been deceived, first and foremost. Not that I really have, but these were and are the feelings I'm working through. I don't know about you, but I have arranged in my little head the way the world ought to work. The world and her people are motivated by love, compassion and care for one another. The world and her people are generous and even willing to sacrifice their personal happiness for the happiness of others. Especially if a bond between people has been formed.

But what I am learning, is that most of the world does not, at all, function in this way. I am told that the country of which I live is completely motivated by money. And I kinda-sorta saw this, but had never been so personally affected by the truth of this reality.

Until last month. Up until that point, I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, love and compassion and generosity might win the battle of poverty. I thought that maybe if I was just loving enough, just friendly and sisterly enough, I could beat out the demands of poverty and how it drives people to think of this one thing only. But I could not. I lost the battle. My love and care didn't win over poverty. She still left. Money did the talking and she went walking. I'm the loser. I don't like that. Because I'd still like to believe that "Love will make the world go round," and "All we need is love," and "We are the world, we are children, we are the ones who make a better world," but this better world doesn't seem to want my love. It seems to want my money.

I don't understand this kind of poverty. I don't think about the price of mango's. I don't count the heads of my children and wonder how they will pass grade school on our meager salary. I don't yearn for their education because I never passed 7th grade and got married at age thirteen. Poverty of money, of mind, of education, of self-esteem. While I have experienced lacking in these things, by all means to a certain degree, at the same time I have never experienced their fullest measure, their debilitating strength.

My expectations have been rocked I guess. I see this reality and I don't like it. Like the time I learned just how prevalent sexual abuse was in households. Ugly. I feel and sense a new kind of ugliness which is distasteful to me, because my little mind had this little world tidied up and it's not so tidy after all. There's black and white and there's most certainly grey. I guess I'm in the grey. I want to believe that Love can win and money isn't the end all. But you know what, to much of world money still trumps. Over a good heart, and good intentions, and Christmas presents, and free meals. Why can't kindness be enough?

This is what I wrestle with throughout the day. I'm in the process of the process.