California. Ha. Just kidding.
So I wrote a post about a week ago. Then I didn’t publish it. This is why I could probably never make a living with my writing if I tried. I wanted to write because of an email my mom sent me telling me she missed my writing. I wrote a few paragraphs and they came out all wrong. Or maybe all write (pun intended, I think), but in any case they were unpublishable. Perhaps this post will turn out the same way…
So I’ve been thinking about moving. Not to a new city. Just to a new place within the city. This neighborhood is too quiet, too safe and too predictable for a white girl from St. Louis. It’s also pretty far from where I work, considering I ride my bike downtown (and back up) every day, rain or shine, wind or fog, early morning or late evening after a long day’s work.
But tonight, on my way home, I was thinking about why I’m thankful for this ride. Maybe it was the wind biting my cheeks, the sun setting in front of me or John Mayer’s rendition of “free fallin’” strumming in my right ear (don’t worry mom, only in my right ear. My left ear is for traffic). These rides, particularly the rides that take longer because my legs don’t want to pedal up that hill, or the wind is forcing me to pedal hard downhill into the wind, are a good time to reflect on my day, my week, my life thus far, and the state of the world.
Tonight I had a heated debate with my former boss about the global “financial crisis,” the sustainability of the world, and the future of humanity. Yeah, I know. I miss working with this guy. But anyway, at some point he decided to sum up our entire discussion thus far by saying “basically it comes down to the fact that humans are first and foremost out for their own selfish interest, or the interest of their own families. People talk about communal uprising and collective revolution, but basically those people are all doing it for their own selfish reasons.” I’m probably misquoting him, but you get the point.
So ok, on my way home I was trying to reconcile this statement, which I consider to be true in so many ways, with the altruism, the self-sacrifice, the spirit of community that I see every day (more on that later). And what I started thinking about on the way home was that there are people who don’t only think of their own self-interest. But why? Why do they think of others? Why do we sometimes stop to give that guy a dollar on the street? Maybe that’s a bad example. Why do we hold the elevator? Why do we perform the random acts of kindness that help others and have absolutely nothing to do with our self-interest? We’re acting not in the interest of ourselves or our families, but in the interest of the human species. Some more than others. But ok, there is something that allows people to do this. It’s simple. They can. They have the privilege of having their own basic needs taken care of. They have the resources. They have the time. They have the money. They have the mental capacity, because their self-interest is already taken care of. Part of the problem (yes, it’s all about propaganda) is that some people’s standards for what is necessary to fulfill their own self-interest have risen to really unnecessary standards. The internet is necessary to fulfill my own self-interest (ha, I write on my blog), really? Really? Really? No, not really. But because my basic needs are met: I have food, I have shelter, I have work that engages my mind and my body on a regular basis (work defined very loosely), I have friends. I have family, therefore I have emotional content. My needs are filled. I am privileged enough to think beyond my own self-interest. Now. What if, what IF everyone’s basic needs were met so that we all could think beyond our own self-interest? Would we? It would be an interesting social experiment (I’m sure social scientists would laugh at this post, as the research has probably been replicated countless times throughout the course of social science history.) It might work on a small scale. But on a global scale? What would it take to get there? A revolution, yes. But what kind? Revolution is kind of outdated, in my opinion. What does revolution look like in the real-time, joomla!?, facebook era??
Segue.
This is really what I’ve been thinking about lately (the above ties in somehow). I hope that I’ve lost some readers by now. Because this is probably one of those things that I will regret publishing in the morning.
So I have found three new places to spend my time, and I have been spending most of my time over the last month or so in these places, and my time not physically in those places at least mentally in those places. I will start with the most predictable and finish with the most outlandish and earth-shattering.
About a month ago I went to a happy hour event for a non-profit focusing on Chinese microcredit projects called Wokai. For $10 we got an interesting introduction to the organization at a swankey bar in the financial district (I felt like I was back in Manhattan, sigh), plus a free one-month membership at Crunch gym downtown. My colleague and I have been going several times a week for a few weeks now. I forgot how much I like lifting weights, pumping iron, if you will. Especially with my broken foot issue that has kept me fairly imobile (for me) since October, it has been wonderful to exert myself and feel the day-by-day increase in physical strength that comes with pumping iron. Number one.
I have been looking for an independent music venue in San Francisco since I got here. I have been to several clubs, cafes, pubs, etc. and had yet to find a place where I felt I was supporting independent artists with real talent and potential. I found The Red Poppy Art House online. I read about several concerts, and the first even I attended was a lecture series entitled “MLK and Jazz.” We talked about history, about music, about philosophy and the human condition. During one of the lecture sessions I spoke with the artistic director of the Red Poppy who told me about their musical performances on Friday and Saturday nights. I already knew of the performances, but her endorsement encouraged me to make plans to come back on a Saturday evening. I went alone the first time. The next week I took my roommate and saw an amazing female singer-songwriter named Meklit Hadero. Amazing. Captivating. Her voice was mesmerizing. Hypnotic.
The atmosphere in the Red Poppy is unlike anything I’ve found elsewhere in SF. The crowd has been amazingly diverse, regardless of the type of event I attend. And they are excited about the music, and the art, and the space, and each other. It’s a community, a family, focused on creative and expression and exchange. So my social and cultural self has been engaged. Number two.
Ok. Those were easy.
A few weeks ago I joined a group of Japanese university students who were studying homelessness and poverty in the US for their spring break. On Saturday we went on a “street retreat” with an organization called Faithful Fools. We walked around the Tenderloin in downtown San Francisco and spoke with homeless people. That deserves its own post, but anyway…On Sunday I joined them for their tour of the city.
We began with a service at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. The celebration, as Glide calls it, included singing, hand-holding, hugging, praying, contemplation and rejuvenation. I was surprised at how much it moved me. There were a few moments during the songs when I almost grabbed for the tissues being distributed by the ushers. No, I’m not kidding. I don’t know what it was that brought such emotion in me, but there was something that echoed in my chest and every fiber of my body the way that a perfectly harmonized chord rings in your ears.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. All week. And the next Saturday evening, I thought to myself, “Maybe I’ll go to Glide tomorrow morning. Just to see what’s up. Just for the singing. That’s it.”
I have been going for a month now. I can not yet effectively describe what it does for me. A close friend asked me to articulate it. I’m not very good at it. I can not say with honesty that I have “found Jesus.” What I can say is that I have found a community of individuals who are focused on social justice, compassion and building mutual understnading among diverse groups and individuals. It happens to be a church. It’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy. I have to slap myself every Sunday I stand in front of those pews and clap in time with the spirituals. I laugh at myself. I laugh more. There’s something going on with me spiritually that I can’t really articulate yet. Number three.
