Whose Peace? Whose Poverty?

Graduate School sucks (1).

It's been awhile since my last post and I felt I needed to be totally honest about a few things...so let me start with that.

Actually, wait. More importantly: Let's take care of administrative stuff first, as that is the first thing I learned in Graduate School...

You may have noticed I changed the name of my blog from "Live by Happiness" to something else that has quite a different ring to it. After a long personal quest for happiness, which included interviews in foreign lands (and by that I mean conversations) and many hours of consultations with the higher power (and by that I mean meditation) I became more and more uncomfortable with the title of my blog; It just didn't resonate with me anymore.

Hold on, that brings me to an important issue of mine that I want to say something about, so, actually, let me start there: Resonate. For the past few years, on this quest for happiness, I have really decided to listen to my heart, my intuition, the things that resonate with me. This has made for quite a remarkable journey as it allows me to be my most true self and I really do appreciate that, because when I have tried to be something other than me (i.e. an intern in Finance) I found the uniform quite uncomfortable.

And so, when I came to changing the title of my blog, I began to ask myself, "well why am I really writing here?" And so, then, in an effort to be my most true self and uphold a vow to honesty that I had bamboo-d into my back a few months ago, I realized that perhaps why I started this blog is not the same reason I am writing today.

So, before I go anywhere, let me be honest about why I started this blog.

I started this blog in 2009, when I was packing up to head out to West Africa to serve as a development volunteer (or some may say "peace keeper") for the United States Peace Corps. The purpose of the blog was merely a place I could post short stories about my life to keep family and friends updated, since I was informed that my internet connection and cell service would be quite limited.

I did not, in fact, ever make it to Africa, as the Peace Corps program was deemed "unsafe" conveniently one month after I quite my job as the finance intern.

And so, the blog finally became live in 2010, when eventually some US Government Official evaluated the safety of a gang-ridden-resourcepoor-economically-and-politically-unstable-but-more-importantly-extremely-violent country to be perfect for Peace Corps and so I landed happily in El Salvador.

I did, in fact, live there happily for 2 fine years in the countryside, pooping (only when infected with parasites, of course, because otherwise I am a dainty female who frequently pedicures and rarely cusses) outdoors, playing soccer with kiddies and doing my best to speak a spanish-lingo I often tried to assimilate back into New York City (with much less success than I had with my Thai yoga pants).

It was, then, in El Salvador, albeit the gun-to-my-head experiences, that I learned the true meaning (for me) of happiness. Which I can take a minute to define, for those who did not follow allow during the pre-'Peace and Poverty' era. Happiness:

• licking sticky mango fingers with neighborhood cuties
• making tortillas with wrinkly old ladies
• bathing beneath a waterfall
• hand washing clothes with a little bicho by your side singing "mi nina bonita"
• the freedom to be whoever it is you want to be
• dirty clothes, gross toe nails, sweaty armpits
• frijoles borrachos 
• living life: feeling. experiencing. laughing. loving. crying. caring.

I made a promise one day, as I walked out my house early at 5am one morning. I'll never forget that promise because I could never really get over that ear-piercing sound of the first morning rooster. That, and the fact that I was so sick (literally) of nearly not making it to the outhouse. Anyways, the misty mountains enveloping the countryside took my breath away and I felt the world stop spinning and every cell in my body stop moving and I wanted that feeling to last forever. And it did and it did not- for that is the nonduality of life. You can't have one without the other. 

Point being, I knew I was where I was meant to be and I wanted to be just perfectly as I was in that moment forever. 

It did not matter my clothes. It did not matter my stomach infection. It did not matter what I thought I knew or what I thought I was going to do. 

The only thing that mattered was that moment. It was all I had.

So, I made a promise, that whenever I had a moment like that, I would hold on to it. If something resonated with me, it was my inner truth speaking to me, and I needed to roll with it. 

And so, I get back to one of my lesser important points of the overall point of this blog (which is that Graduate School sucks). The lesser point, is that I started this blog to share my story, and I named it Live By Happiness because I was writing about my quest for the "new" kind of happiness, which I discovered living in El Salvador.

But, as times change, so my ongoing experiments with happiness have lead me on a deeper quest. For, I came to realize that happiness is a label which, for some, is ephemeral. In fact, perhaps some do not seek happiness at all, and definitions of happiness there are many. 

I have since replaced the quest for happiness, with the quest for inner peace and wellbeing...as 'wellbeing' is a more measurable statistic that takes into account many factors of an individual's life that could, some say, create lasting happiness. While the importance and weight of each factor may vary, it is safe to say that these essential elements, namely Financial, Career, Physical Health, Social and Community engagement (Gallup), are all things that contribute to an individual's state of optimal wellbeing. 

And, so, for a person who is passionate about peace work, I started to become extremely interested in talking to individuals, to get a sense of their overall wellbeing.

This came from a very personal space.

You see, as a "white" girl from the US living in rural El Salvador, I noticed many young women talking to me as if they envied me.

And, yet, when the doors closed at the end of the night to my tiny lonely hut, I so wished to live a life much more simply as my Salvadoran neighbors. I wished to have family and friends constantly around. I longed to have the time to say "hello, how are you?" to each person I passed by on the street and actually listen to their response. I wanted to live more than just two years, without a pounding heart and without racing the clock. I actually waited for the moment that my best-Salvadoran-friend's family would curse each other (as we did quite regularly in my New York home)... And that moment never happened. 

So, why is it that these so-called "developed nations" are so revered in the statistics, in the media, in the minds of the masses? What message are we sending the world when we compare each other's "successes" by GDP and statistics that don't tell the story of our suicidal citizens? When did human feelings and experience (what some may call life)- when did those things become less important than the numbers? 

And so, while I stand by the original purpose of my blog- to share my story- to speak my mind- to create a space for thought- I also would like to open the arena to something I am quite passionate about: digging deeper into the meanings of peace and poverty. 

But that forces me to ask the question: whose peace are we talking about? Because what peace means to me, is quite different than peace for you. And, while my Peace Corps work may lead you to believe that I set foot in the world of poverty, let me tell you that the poverty I lived and experienced and felt and saw in the United States was much more extreme that the poverty I lived for two years in El Salvador.

My prior life in New York, I was living a poverty of the human soul; Sacrificing my happiness, my love, my inner talents and gifts in the name of financial gain, competition and stress. To be honest, I'm not sure how often I stopped to recognize that I was even truly alive- and is that not the greatest sin of all? Not to appreciate life? 

Between 2010-2012 I had the privilege to work alongside some of the most beautiful, humble, skillful, eloquent, grounded, fun-loving, endearing, compassionate, resource-poor people in the world in El Salvador. I learned more there than any other era of my life and I can honestly say, that almost everyday in El Salvador I took a moment to appreciate life.

So, when we think about poverty...violence... development- whose are we talking about? What do "you" know about "them", and since when can "one" define the "other"?

And, so, that brings me to my point:

Graduate School sucks (2).

Because I have to think about things like this. 

And I often find myself ending up much like this blog- right back where I started.

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Footnotes
(1) Graduate school does not actually suck.
(2) Whose suck?