And as I look out into this diverse disarray, I think, That could be me. And that could be me. While I’m no longer shocked and awed by humanity’s most enigmatic and longest-standing peril of poverty, I am not sure if my conscience will ever cease repeating that mantra: That could be me. What is it that separates any of us?
A man of relative middle class privilege, Walt Whitman was shocked and awed when he moved to New Orleans and the brutalities of slavery were unveiled to him. Whitman was driven by a personal demon that compelled him to literally imagine himself as one of those ‘beautiful, olive-skinned, ignorant and illiterate’ human beings waiting to be traded on the corner. Enraged, engaged, empowered and entrusted with the gift of activism, Whitman never ran for president. He certainly never started an NGO to save the enslaved from evil capitalists. Whitman wrote. He wrote vehemently, controversially, and unabashedly about these perils of humanity. Through his voice, Whitman attempted to vocalize the questions he believed were paralyzing his fellow countrymen.
Every soul has its own individual voice. I remember being enraged once after I read Nickled and Dimed, and I think there was a point in my college career where I envisioned myself as a social activist, I was sure I would find something I was mad about enough to march on Washington. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to find injustices with an obvious and blatant solution, and easier and easier to succumb to a life of shrugged shoulders and a general feeling of ‘shucks’. I admire and so deeply envy the Walt Whitman’s of the world, the risk-takers and stand-aloners and voice-for-the-voicless ones. I wish I knew exactly what kind of world I thought was appropriate and exactly how to get there. Unfortunately, I’m one of those with her head stuck in the clouds, congested by obstacles of the ever-present grey area of life.
After I returned from Bangladesh in December of 2010 I wrote that I wanted to stop trying to save the world, and stop thinking that the world needed saving. I just wanted to find my own little plot of land that was appointed to me in the universe and work like hell to make it as great as I imagined it could be. Mostly, I just wanted to live, to breathe in the aromatic offerings of life’s games. I still can’t define Guatemala’s middle class and I still can’t define the nerve endings that squirm into an oblivion of emotion every time I kindly nod, smile, and keep walking when the blind woman on the corner asks me for change, and I'll probably never stop thinking, that could be me. But
