I'm sitting on a ship about 500 nautical miles from Capetown South Africa and am in awe of humanity and the possibility it holds. I sat in a tiny room aboard the ship for our annual global studies class today and listened to the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu describe to us what it was like to live in a country that discriminated against him on the basis of the color of his skin.
It was a powerful and touching story that caused me to pause and to reflect about the world as we know it. One of Desmond's key points was not to dismantle and rehash all of the awful things that had happened to the black and colored South Africans during the apartheid era, but rather to rejoice in the celebration of a new beginning, of a freedom that they had never known until their chains of oppression had been lifted. This concept that love is in the air, the idea of respect for the human spirit and those people who consume our lives and our world. What does it mean exactly to be apart of a universal community? He sat there and thanked us, the students of the United States for what we had done to help free South Africans from their oppression...the sit-ins in Berkley and the vigilance of our nation and the recognition of the pain and suffering that he felt at that time.
At first it was shocking to me, this incredibly profound and amazing man thanking us, bestowing upon us his gratitude and admiration for something, in my eyes, we had no hand in; something we did not directly do, nor as current students, were not even aware of. I was struck by this because I looked around the room and I didn’t see your social activists, your movers and shakers, but what I saw was a bunch of kids who had been sent on this journey by their wealthy parents, to spend more of their money on booze and tanning lotion on the ship and villa's and more beer on the beach while we were visiting these amazing places. What I had originally seen, was not bravery, courage or even acts of empathy or pride, but rather what I felt as greed, as snobbery, lust and vanity. I was at loss of words when he thanked these very people for what they had "done" to help South Africa become a nation of freedom, independence and as a result a happier and more joyous place. I saw we had, the freedoms we took for granted and the lives we led, and I questioned...how could this man be thanking us?
But as his speech drove on, the stories he told, the ideas he put forward, I began to make a connection, to be reminded of something I had come close to losing and that is the incredible capacity of the human spirit. Something amazing that the Archbishop has pointed out numerous times on this voyage is that as human beings we are all interconnected. I cannot be me without you, or anyone else in the world. Every human person has the capacity to inspire hope, change, and love; to bring to the world something great and wonderful. The potential is wonderful, and our ability to be whole human beings is a challenge for so many.
The archbishop ended with the story about how an odd chicken turned out to be an eagle that had been stuck in a chicken coup for years until a scientist came along and saw it for what it really was. The scientist took the eagle out of its cage and then to the top of a mountain where at sunrise the scientist let it loose and into the sunrise it flew. To me this story exhibited the potential for humanity to do something wonderful with our lives, to fly with the wind beneath our wings and to discover all that is possible within our lives. I looked around the room, and I suddenly saw what the Archbishop had seen and that is the potential for what these human beings surrounding me COULD do, what they MIGHT do if they were given the capacity to do something if they could. I started thinking about some of the different forms of oppression that affect the very people I was criticizing. I saw a country where the media has become the way of life. Crime, anger, rage and war have been what our country, our lives have become about. Life according to the media is about sex, not love, not compassion and empathy. I see a world where young girls must conform to dumbing down and altering their bodies in such a way to become "worthy" of affection. I saw a world where young men must take upon violence and power in order to be considered worthy of respect, to set aside their emotions and fears to be real men. I see a place where there is a dream told to everyone that if they only worked hard enough, they could become something. I see people breaking their backs just to earn a penny and a chance at this "dream". I see people hording money because they don't remember what it’s like to love, to feel to be apart of a community or better yet a humanity and find comfort in what they buy and wear. I see a society that has denigrated all different kinds of people and does not reflect them in their ideals and their "standards" of life, and forgets that they are our neighbors, our loved ones, our friends. I see a country that is filled with fear, hurt, and confusion and more than anything I see a country of people who live in another world, another place than the very places that we used to call home.
What I see, and what I believe the archbishop saw, is the potential for these very same people to love, to find compassion and empathy. If they were given the chance, the hope, the dream of making the world a better place, they would. If they saw and lived in the real world where people are murdered for various reasons each and every day; that they would do something, and in some cases, such as the apartheid, they have and will. I saw and recognized that without these people, without the people of the world, no one would be where they are today. No one would have the same understanding of the world and no one would realize this capacity for us to love, to dream and to hope that tomorrow may be a better day. That tomorrow we may see in each other what has existed all along and that is our common existence. That tomorrow we may start to take care of one another, to stick up for one another and to start to defend each others existence as truly beautiful and amazing in and of itself.
So I looked around the room and what I saw was now hope, that maybe their eyes would be opened, maybe mine would be too, to what we as human beings could do. How this journey might change us in a number of ways and how each and every person on this ship can and will bring to the world something great and beautiful if they are given the chance to change the world in their own little way. That we are privileged in what we do and we have been given this great opportunity to see things with our own eyes and see for ourselves the potential the people of the world have. In the end after all, when the eagle was seen for what it really was, it was capable of soaring into the distant future.
It was a powerful and touching story that caused me to pause and to reflect about the world as we know it. One of Desmond's key points was not to dismantle and rehash all of the awful things that had happened to the black and colored South Africans during the apartheid era, but rather to rejoice in the celebration of a new beginning, of a freedom that they had never known until their chains of oppression had been lifted. This concept that love is in the air, the idea of respect for the human spirit and those people who consume our lives and our world. What does it mean exactly to be apart of a universal community? He sat there and thanked us, the students of the United States for what we had done to help free South Africans from their oppression...the sit-ins in Berkley and the vigilance of our nation and the recognition of the pain and suffering that he felt at that time.
At first it was shocking to me, this incredibly profound and amazing man thanking us, bestowing upon us his gratitude and admiration for something, in my eyes, we had no hand in; something we did not directly do, nor as current students, were not even aware of. I was struck by this because I looked around the room and I didn’t see your social activists, your movers and shakers, but what I saw was a bunch of kids who had been sent on this journey by their wealthy parents, to spend more of their money on booze and tanning lotion on the ship and villa's and more beer on the beach while we were visiting these amazing places. What I had originally seen, was not bravery, courage or even acts of empathy or pride, but rather what I felt as greed, as snobbery, lust and vanity. I was at loss of words when he thanked these very people for what they had "done" to help South Africa become a nation of freedom, independence and as a result a happier and more joyous place. I saw we had, the freedoms we took for granted and the lives we led, and I questioned...how could this man be thanking us?
But as his speech drove on, the stories he told, the ideas he put forward, I began to make a connection, to be reminded of something I had come close to losing and that is the incredible capacity of the human spirit. Something amazing that the Archbishop has pointed out numerous times on this voyage is that as human beings we are all interconnected. I cannot be me without you, or anyone else in the world. Every human person has the capacity to inspire hope, change, and love; to bring to the world something great and wonderful. The potential is wonderful, and our ability to be whole human beings is a challenge for so many.
The archbishop ended with the story about how an odd chicken turned out to be an eagle that had been stuck in a chicken coup for years until a scientist came along and saw it for what it really was. The scientist took the eagle out of its cage and then to the top of a mountain where at sunrise the scientist let it loose and into the sunrise it flew. To me this story exhibited the potential for humanity to do something wonderful with our lives, to fly with the wind beneath our wings and to discover all that is possible within our lives. I looked around the room, and I suddenly saw what the Archbishop had seen and that is the potential for what these human beings surrounding me COULD do, what they MIGHT do if they were given the capacity to do something if they could. I started thinking about some of the different forms of oppression that affect the very people I was criticizing. I saw a country where the media has become the way of life. Crime, anger, rage and war have been what our country, our lives have become about. Life according to the media is about sex, not love, not compassion and empathy. I see a world where young girls must conform to dumbing down and altering their bodies in such a way to become "worthy" of affection. I saw a world where young men must take upon violence and power in order to be considered worthy of respect, to set aside their emotions and fears to be real men. I see a place where there is a dream told to everyone that if they only worked hard enough, they could become something. I see people breaking their backs just to earn a penny and a chance at this "dream". I see people hording money because they don't remember what it’s like to love, to feel to be apart of a community or better yet a humanity and find comfort in what they buy and wear. I see a society that has denigrated all different kinds of people and does not reflect them in their ideals and their "standards" of life, and forgets that they are our neighbors, our loved ones, our friends. I see a country that is filled with fear, hurt, and confusion and more than anything I see a country of people who live in another world, another place than the very places that we used to call home.
What I see, and what I believe the archbishop saw, is the potential for these very same people to love, to find compassion and empathy. If they were given the chance, the hope, the dream of making the world a better place, they would. If they saw and lived in the real world where people are murdered for various reasons each and every day; that they would do something, and in some cases, such as the apartheid, they have and will. I saw and recognized that without these people, without the people of the world, no one would be where they are today. No one would have the same understanding of the world and no one would realize this capacity for us to love, to dream and to hope that tomorrow may be a better day. That tomorrow we may see in each other what has existed all along and that is our common existence. That tomorrow we may start to take care of one another, to stick up for one another and to start to defend each others existence as truly beautiful and amazing in and of itself.
So I looked around the room and what I saw was now hope, that maybe their eyes would be opened, maybe mine would be too, to what we as human beings could do. How this journey might change us in a number of ways and how each and every person on this ship can and will bring to the world something great and beautiful if they are given the chance to change the world in their own little way. That we are privileged in what we do and we have been given this great opportunity to see things with our own eyes and see for ourselves the potential the people of the world have. In the end after all, when the eagle was seen for what it really was, it was capable of soaring into the distant future.
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