Water is the softest thing on earth
Yet its silken gentleness
Will easily wear away the hardest stone.
Everyone knows this;
Few use it in their daily lives.
Those of Tao yield and overcome.
-Lao-tzu
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
On my way home
Every day, I take a city bus and a fifteen-minute walk to get home from class/work. And I'm glad that I do. I have to admit, if it weren't so impossible to park at the University of Texas I would probably drive my car a lot more frequently. But since that's not an option, I am actually much better off.
Although it takes about forty minutes or so in transit, and of course I could be more "efficient" with that time, it is precisely the things that happen on the bus and on my walk that get me out of my routine and make me think about things more important than my self just when I most need to.
Consider yesterday:
Two people, one a seemingly-homeless man (black) and the other a seemingly-homeless woman (white) get on the bus and sit at each end, the man near me in the back and the woman up front. The woman was a little off, and proceeded in the silence of this group of strangers to mutter obvious racial slurs and glare at the man in the back. I felt uncomfortable and ashamed but could only ignore it, well-trained city traveller that I am. The man then turned to me:
"you a student?"
"yes," I replied simply, fighting overwhelming reluctance to talk to a strange man but wanting to appear friendly on principle. I often interact with the fear of being called a "snobby white girl."
"what's your major?" he said.
"sociology."
"ah, sociology... so, you gonna make a difference??"
Well, I had no response to that. I shrugged and smiled weakly. Right then, anything I could say might get me stuck in my own logical or moral inconsistency. In the end, the best I could do was to make sure I wished this man a nice evening as I left the bus. A weak show of "making a difference," at best.
Then, tonight, while walking, this:
The picture hardly shows how beautiful and perfect it looked there on the sidewalk. It was completely unmarked, impossible to see how it had died. I don't usually (well, ever) have my camera with me, but for some reason I had it today. So I stopped and I caught a digital record.
I don't have a way to neatly explain the meaning in each of these experiences or how they "made me feel." I can only just say that they did not fit, really, into the modern picture of a world that is neat, easy to explain, or homogenous. They don't fit into the false three-car-family time-is-money uniform world; because, in fact, they are part of the REAL world, where life is messy and beautiful things die and strangers just won't be quiet when we want them to.
And so for that, I am grateful that I am forced to rely on an alternative form of transportation to the personal automobile. My life is made just a bit more interesting and a bit more REAL because of it.
Although it takes about forty minutes or so in transit, and of course I could be more "efficient" with that time, it is precisely the things that happen on the bus and on my walk that get me out of my routine and make me think about things more important than my self just when I most need to.
Consider yesterday:
Two people, one a seemingly-homeless man (black) and the other a seemingly-homeless woman (white) get on the bus and sit at each end, the man near me in the back and the woman up front. The woman was a little off, and proceeded in the silence of this group of strangers to mutter obvious racial slurs and glare at the man in the back. I felt uncomfortable and ashamed but could only ignore it, well-trained city traveller that I am. The man then turned to me:
"you a student?"
"yes," I replied simply, fighting overwhelming reluctance to talk to a strange man but wanting to appear friendly on principle. I often interact with the fear of being called a "snobby white girl."
"what's your major?" he said.
"sociology."
"ah, sociology... so, you gonna make a difference??"
Well, I had no response to that. I shrugged and smiled weakly. Right then, anything I could say might get me stuck in my own logical or moral inconsistency. In the end, the best I could do was to make sure I wished this man a nice evening as I left the bus. A weak show of "making a difference," at best.
Then, tonight, while walking, this:
The picture hardly shows how beautiful and perfect it looked there on the sidewalk. It was completely unmarked, impossible to see how it had died. I don't usually (well, ever) have my camera with me, but for some reason I had it today. So I stopped and I caught a digital record.
I don't have a way to neatly explain the meaning in each of these experiences or how they "made me feel." I can only just say that they did not fit, really, into the modern picture of a world that is neat, easy to explain, or homogenous. They don't fit into the false three-car-family time-is-money uniform world; because, in fact, they are part of the REAL world, where life is messy and beautiful things die and strangers just won't be quiet when we want them to.
And so for that, I am grateful that I am forced to rely on an alternative form of transportation to the personal automobile. My life is made just a bit more interesting and a bit more REAL because of it.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Those wraskally rascals!
If you want to REALLY be shocked by how much money you give the feds for half a years pay, just pay it all at once when tax time comes around. Yikes. Since I live off of fellowship money (which is oh so generously "given" to me rather than "earned," in a taxation sense) taxes do not get withheld from my income during the school year; but rather, they are stolen right out of my pocket in april. Gives one a new appreciation for the gentler, kinder "withholding" technique.
Do you ever try to convince yourself that "it's just money"? Yeah, right. We're Americans around here. It's NOT just money. It's not just what makes the world go 'round and drives our monstrous economy, it's also somehow become symbolic of everything else of value in life that it can't literally buy: our worth as a human being, our capability and talent, security, intelligence, kindness, love... Money's got its grubby little fingers in everything.
But it's not real.
So today I tried to tell myself, like so many times before, that IT DOES'T MATTER, and I'm probably happier with less anyway, etc. etc. Maybe eventually, if I've told myself that enough, I will have heard it as often as I've heard from my culture that money is everything. And maybe, at that point... I'll finally get it.
Do you ever try to convince yourself that "it's just money"? Yeah, right. We're Americans around here. It's NOT just money. It's not just what makes the world go 'round and drives our monstrous economy, it's also somehow become symbolic of everything else of value in life that it can't literally buy: our worth as a human being, our capability and talent, security, intelligence, kindness, love... Money's got its grubby little fingers in everything.
But it's not real.
So today I tried to tell myself, like so many times before, that IT DOES'T MATTER, and I'm probably happier with less anyway, etc. etc. Maybe eventually, if I've told myself that enough, I will have heard it as often as I've heard from my culture that money is everything. And maybe, at that point... I'll finally get it.
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