One thing keeps coming into my mind now that I’ve been back in Spain from Senegal for a couple of weeks: grace and generosity are a completely different sport there, as shown to us by our hosts. It was astonishingly unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. Anywhere.
Generosity is the habit of giving freely without coercion, which leads my mind to something else: while there, our hosts would typically and immediately describe to us their need, listing specifics in some cases, leaving no margin for egotism or hidden agendas. They relinquished any such notions, admitting freely that they needed our help and welcomed us wholeheartedly into their intimate communities. The best part of this is: this freed us all up to then enjoy each others company in earnest, having gotten the “business” of expectations quickly out of the way.
In the developed world, it’s all about the poker face, which I wonder what the effect of is, exactly, over time to the way we relate to each other.
Once past the meeting stage, the graciousness displayed by all of our hosts was unrivaled. Truly. Letting a complete stranger into their home to film them: me and my camera shooting the poverty surrounding them and yet also how little it seems to matter to their general satisfaction with their lives. The people of Keur Mbaye Fall need little to make them happy. In contrast, I worked hard not to project my own guilt about taking so much for granted in my own life, for having problems that aren’t really problems at all outside of the traps my Western mind sets for itself for seemingly no reason at all.
One example of what I mean is worth relating here: after one particularly long and hot work day, one of the community leaders invited a few of us to his home to wash our hands and faces. Upon entering, I felt a most peculiar feeling come over me. It felt familiar. Deja vu. Familiar as if from an early childhood memory, from a room in my mind that had had its door shut a long time ago, only to have it opened on this day. It certainly could have been the heat, however, I choose to believe there was much more to it than that.
Upon preparing to leave his home and return to our team and the shuttle that would return us to the compound where we were staying, he offered us the most unlikely of things: from a freezer (photo below) he removed four small, plastic baggies, twisted in half with an orange-ish substance in them. As soon as he placed one in my hand (it was cold, frozen) my entire body shuddered from the shock of it – pleasantly. I was stunned. Here was a man who had exponentially less than any of us could ever imagine, sharing something of a most exquisite nature with us, something not just anyone could acquire in this place. Something that surely took him a great deal of trouble to finagle into his own life for his own family and here he was, sharing it freely as if it were no trouble at all.
As we left the shady comfort of his home, we bit off a corner of our baggies and began manipulating the frozen stuff out through the hole using our lips to smash it gently without further tearing the baggy. It tasted not unlike a Push-Up, yet another childhood memory that I couldn’t have known would be connected to this day. I dawdled along behind the others, savoring it, wondering whatever had I done to deserve such an amazing experience and this selfless and so very fine a gift from a man of such simple means. Right then and there I stopped in the middle of the road and stood, humbled, with a cool and soothing ice cream in the harsh desert climate of Africa.
Easy to take this all for granted. Breathing. Walking. Seeing. Feeling. Any sense. Pick one. And it’s even easier to stroll through this whole thing blind to the possibility that this may just very well all be some dream. We know nothing about what any of us are doing here.
In the meantime, we find things to make it about: for some, it’s about love and a sense of belonging. For many it appears to be money and fame. That’s surprising, isn’t it? Celebrity only seems to present new problems. It doesn’t change anything. It steals privacy, creates further issues with identity, but doesn’t provide any solutions for this singular dilemma. Nothing does.
So I am writing this to myself.
When people die, people close to us, it kindles something. What is that feeling? It makes me calm, reminds me of our connectivity to everything. It may be morbid, but I am oddly comforted by that loneliness, walking around in that stupor. Pleased to be again so intimately conscious that we have no control over any of this schwack. I am at peace within the moments of tragedy in a way I cannot be to quite the same degree otherwise. i don’t need anything in those times. I’m not hungry or thirsty. I’m not tired. I just seem to be picking up some signal that can’t be known coming from somewhere, everywhere. Call it shock if you want. There’s something more going on there, something unseen that has properties. As if ocean waves generate this frequency that we haven’t even considered the possibility of, or clouds being ghosts that have trapped themselves here, not having let go of their lives here on Earth yet. I laugh at what we think we know. Even if it is correct, it is always, ALWAYS, only the tip of the iceberg.
We can buy this, travel there, pretend to be this or that but it doesn’t help.
As Vonnegut used to say:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
Are we evolving closer or further away from this awareness? What are the advantages of each? Disadvantages?
What could this awareness do for us? Is it important?
Does it change how we treat each other? Ourselves?
Do we care?
We salute at the threshold of the North Sea
in my mind
And a nod to the boredom that drove me here
to face the tide and swim
(Whoaaaa) I swim (Whoaaa) oh swim (Whoaaa)
Dip the toe in the ocean. Oh how it hardens and it numbs.
And the rest of me is a version of man
built to collapse into crumbs
And if I hadn’t come down
To the coast to disappear
I may have died in a land-slide
Of the rocks, the hopes and fears.
So swim until you can’t see land.
Swim until you can’t see land.
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?
Up to my knees now, do I wait? Do I dive?
The sea has seen my like before though it’s my first
And perhaps last time.
Let’s call me a baptist, call this the drowning of the past
She’s there on the shoreline
Throwing stones at my back
So swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?
Now the water’s taller than me
And the land is a marker line
All I am is a body adrift in water, salt and sky
So swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?
Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works — sharing her ability to “think in pictures,” which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.
The Garden
When the morning breaks
We will be out walking
We will watch the sun
Rise above the wall
We will ask ourselves
What road to take
We will catch our hearts
You and I
decide
Where to take our journey
How high to fly
Love to love our turning
You and I
Take the road we take
Then we improvise
When the road it breaks
There will be surprises
Live to grow with fate
Wake to see your Time
Search your heart with mine
You and I
decide
You and I
Garden
grows around
us
