Ugggghhhhhhhhhh cont.

If I could assail the proverbial source with an entire postman's truck (and more) of hate mail right now, I'd so be spending the rest of the night writing passionate, angry letters, irrespective of the fact that I have to wake up early for an interview tomorrow. The problem is I just don't know who I'd send it to. Hugo Chavez for ruining lives? Manuel Zelaya for being an incapable idiot? Hurricane Mitch for undoing 50 years of progress way back in 1998 and causing a continued landslide of regression? The desperate for whom dirty money is just arguably money? Injustice for...existing?

I admit part of me is just really bitter because my family is beginning to cut painstaking ties out of sheer necessity. Logistical preparations for the next two years have begun to make family history nothing more than history and cherished memories of good times past. Because of the imminent end of an era, I was determined to max out. Alas, messy politics intervene and override again to my extreme dismay. No December trip it is. Boohoo. It's not even summer 2010 and much of me is dying already.

But another, hopefully not so whiny, part of me is upset because, well, how does one go about fixing shit like this? Where do you even begin to hope for change much less think about how to take action? As of August, Honduras has joined the ranks of countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Dominica, Nicaragua, and Cuba (!!! and those are not positive exclamation marks) as an officially recognized member of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), an alliance of leftist Latin American leaders with socialist tendencies. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya says a lack of international support to tackle chronic poverty forced him to seek such aid.

It's unfair that some countries are stuck in a rut of perpetual poverty, economic woes, political quagmire, and severe inequality among many other tragic problems that all combine to create a cyclical, inescapable mess of a situation. (Especially one in which it is generally the poor who suffer most direly.) How does someone like me with heartfelt ties and little influential power, or really anyone for that matter, change a seemingly hopeless downward spiral of a nation that always had it coming?

Sending remittances comfortably from America to areas or organizations it appears to be needed, working with street children one at a time, or even reforming entire orphanages despite the best intentions will not change the plight and direction of the country. Not to be a Pessimistic Patty, but sometimes simply statically standing by and watching numbly seems unfortunately not just the only option but the most effective (and this is applicable to too many other situations all over the world).

Argghhhh.

Ugggghhhhhhhhhh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrpEeblEx0A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzAKdVu-KyI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6edugoBGMss


Freaking politics. Mourning Honduras...sad face.

On being kind of old...

"So there I was my senior year in college, still feeling like I had no clue what I'd be doing after I graduated. [...] And the more I read the Scriptures, the more uncertain I became about my plans for the future, or even of the wisdom of making plans in the first place, since God seems to be in the business of messing them up. It didn't help that I was majoring in sociology, the study of human behavior. (How much more vague can you get, and what do you do with that degree?) And folks were asking me what I was going to do when I graduated from college. People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying, 'I'm not too concerned with what I am going to do. I am more interested in who I am becoming. I want to be a lover of God and people.'"

Shane Claiborne wrote this is in his book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, but I feel like I could have written just that in my journal over the last months.

Oh wait. I have.

As the ominous senior year approaches, the questions inquiring what I'm going to do with my life thereafter have been raining down like sucker punches in a schoolyard scuffle. I've taken to barely holding my ground by ambiguously throwing out maybe working in DC mutter mutter maybe grad school but ehh mutter mutter maybe teaching English somewhere for a bit mutter mutter. Mutter mutter. Mutter mutter. All this to say, heck, I have no effing idea. As disappointing and impractical as that may be to my parents (and a lot of other folks and sometimes even me), I really just don't know.

There are certainly some things I am interested in, some things I feel God has given me a heart for, and some things I definitely don't ever wish to pursue, but pulling them altogether into a life-lasting "occupation" of sorts is one thing that still eludes me. I have attempted many a time to somewhat organize my thoughts in written manner with the hopes that when I read back through them, a cohesive answer will magically appear on the page. And every single time, the only thing of which I am more and more sure is the same sentiment Claiborne expresses in the above paragraph. Hum. Así que, vamos a ver, ¿eh?

On another note, it's uncanny in how many ways I identify with Claiborne as I read through his book. In fact, many times what he writes, I have written the same thought processes, questions, insecurities, indignations, etc. in my own journal. Weird.

I'm sure there will be more entries to come as we see how the book finishes out. I hope it gets messy...