Lull

I feel like I have been sleep-walking through the week, struggling with happiness and perspective. I'm not sure if there is a single cause for the dip in spirit or if its a combination of a lot of things: harsh situations observed recently, homesickness, job disillusionment, adoption-process frustration, doubt, and feelings of inadequacy. Maybe it is simply just one of the natural "ebbs" in the ebb and flow of life, a normal reaction to living in a challenging environment.

There have been times this week where I've struggled with moments of internal anxiety and claustrophobia where I yearn to break free of situations out of my control. I want to escape the traffic, the heat, the city, the onslaught of pollution. I want to run from clinics that have felt more and more hopelessly repetitive with the same superficial interventions and BandAid medicine, from the faces of hunger and neglect I can't immediately help. I want to break out of Haiti, flee from duties and labels that don't fit well, from itchy feet and wander lust, from dissatisfaction with our outreach, from the feeling of inability to change certain situations. I yearn for the open fields of Kansas, the fragrant forests of the Rocky Mountains, for friends and family, for fall leaves and apple cider on the stove, for crisp air and open parks, for evening walks with the dogs and long runs through neighborhoods and the countryside.

And then I'm immediately embarrassed, ashamed of my cowardliness when I live in such relative comfort. I am educated, employed, supported by friends and family. I eat every day, enjoy good health, sleep in a comfortable home and cruise the streets in a sturdy car. If I want to leave Haiti, I can. If I want to escape, I have the resources to do so. Yet all around me are people born into situations that leave them option-less. They wake up every day and move on, they keep working or surviving. How dare I not celebrate all I have instead of yearning for that which I miss.

I struggle with these kinds of moments of questioning and depression of spirit. I know that they can and will happen no matter where we are, what jobs we are in. I know that they happen in some fashion or another to everyone. What annoys me the most is that I'm not beyond it all, that I haven't evolved or developed myself to a place where I'm more secure, more balanced, more self-assured, more accepting, more peaceful and more consistently loving and living in the moment.

Last Monday I had an overwhelming sense of happiness with where I was and what I was doing, feeling ok with my work however limited it is because it was offering me the opportunity to sit and hold the hands of people who suffer, giving me the chance to interact with incredibly brave, funny, inspiring students, patients and people, allowing me to be a very present mom, granting me time to read and write, time that I can use to better myself in other ways. Then suddenly I find myself in a slump, fatigued by observations and situations I'm helpless to change, drained from hands held open in my direction, asking for money, aid, scholarships, food. The fact that my patience and perspective, my outlook and presence-in-the-moment is so fragile just drives me nutty. I hate that my perspective isn't more fixed, doesn't pass forward with consistence in my life after previous reflections, work and discoveries got me to those points. Why must they be so fleeting?

I just finished a book by Kira Salak about her kayaking trip down the Niger River to Timbuktu. I identified with a lot of what she wrote regarding taking risky adventures, about her interactions with foreign people and cultures in villages along the river, her struggles as a "have" in a "have not" country, and her constantly fluctuating state of perspective. I particularly liked the following excerpt:

"I wonder what we look for when we embark on these kinds of trips. There is the pat answer that you tell the people you don't know: that you're interested in seeing a place, learning about its people. But then the trip begins and the hardship comes, and the hardship is more honest: it tells us that we don't have enough patience yet, nor humility, nor gratitude. And we thought that we did. Hardship brings us closer to truth, and thus is more difficult to bear, but from it alone comes compassion. And so I've told the world that it can do what it wants with me during this trip if only, by the end, I have learned something more. A bargain, then. The journey, my teacher."

I think the passage speaks to what Patrick and I have been going in and out of over the last 11 months in various degrees of passion and dispassion, inspiration and frustration. I tolerate the yo-yo'ing emotional roller coaster we are on trusting that it is bringing us to a better place, a stronger self, a more compassionate heart, a more patient presence in the world, a more evolved state of being. At the very least, we are learning.

The evolution of "character," of the spirit is in constant flux. Ultimately, I'm glad to be in a place that doesn't allow me to get comfortable for long, that continually drudges up emotions, contemplations, and weakness, bringing them to the center stage and forcing me to reconcile, to change, to adapt, to grow. So recognizing a slump serves to remind me to slow down, breath deep, meditate, find beauty, discover balance once again.