Stranger

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in ... – D. H. Lawrence

If you have not read my last post, do so now.

I don't think anything has ever permeated my life the way my desire to fight poverty has in the last two days.  I think about it when I wake, when I go to sleep, and so far as I recall, the moments in between.  I am thankful that God has given me the ability to concentrate on my work when I need to, but the instant I pack up my computer, my thoughts return to loftier goals.  The idea of my participating in human relief efforts still seems unspeakably foreign, because it has never been so much as a flicker on the radar of what I plan to do with my life.  I think the most "effort" I've put in to helping the less-fortunate is buying a (RED) campaign t-shirt from GAP.  With a gift card.

I can tell that it's going to take some time for me to learn how to adjust to the lifestyle that my new plans demand.  The more I wrap my mind around what it means to invest my life in fighting poverty, the more I realize I will lose — and essentially gain.  I am overwhelmed by the amount of research, penny-pinching, self-discipline and inner transformation that has to happen before I can begin to think about defining long-term plans, so I am tackling these with baby steps: identifying luxuries — a concept that has been drastically redefined for me — which I can eliminate immediately; seeking out reading materials that can begin to open my eyes to the taboo realities of what real poverty is (already, I've learned that the vast majority of the world, myself included, haven't a clue), and deciphering the new purpose for finishing my education and pursing excellence in graphic design, an idea which I once considered paramount to my career but now seems peripheral and meaningless.  However, as I imagine it will be quite some time before God has fully prepared me to dive into the deep end, I believe continuing to work as a designer is the best way to utilize the gifts with which He has already equipped me in order to take financial responsibility for paying for college, support myself in the interim, and set aside a small fortune for when I finally take a plunge to do whatever, wherever.

Two days ago, I was well on my way to becoming an upper-middle-class design professional.  I shopped the sale racks at GAP and LOFT and DSW, sipped on Starbucks coffee while I worked with the Adobe Suite on my fifteen-inch MacBook Pro, and occasionally (maybe even regularly) went out for a meal (and a drink) with friends.  I whined about things like jeans made with low-quality denim, subway ads with a poor typography treatment, and my favorite coffee shop rearranging its furniture and moving my favorite highboy tables to a corner with only a partial street view.  I recognized these frustrations as trivial, certainly, but with my gift of babbling for the sake of babbling, at least two or three people would know of them by the end of the day.

I'm not as horrified of my former lifestyle as I am unable to comprehend it.  Yesterday, a friend invited me on a shopping trip to the three-story (soon to be six-story) Forever 21 in Causeway Bay.  Thrown off-guard by an offer that would have been a no-brainer a few days before but which now seemed absurd, my instincts were still so confused that I agreed.  As we exited the MTR station onto a bustling street separating us from the shiny skyscraper adorned with a monstrous plasma screen television, I felt like someone from the plains of Africa seeing a department store for the first time.  I was a stranger in my own stomping ground.

Girls like me (who I used to be) swarmed throughout the three floors, snatching garments from racks of bold, funky clothing that they would grow tired of in twelve months.  I floated through a gallery of sequins, fake gold jewelry, neon leather, sheer silk blouses, and string bikinis with Popeye and Hello Kitty.  I looked around, and for the first time, I couldn't make sense of the idea of recreational shopping.  These people are trying on clothes for fun.  She's never going to wear that sweater; she probably has six more of those at home; do we really have nothing better to do with our time than try on clothes that we don't even need?  I tried on a few basics that I could see myself wearing in India or sub-Saharan Africa, but my mind translated every price tag into "food for a child for two months," and I put them back.

I do not aim to condemn shopping or heap guilt upon those who enjoy any of the luxuries I have mentioned or implied.  My purpose in conveying this experience is to illustrate how my whole world turned upside-down overnight.  With a perspective shaped by my goals to fight poverty, nothing makes sense anymore.  It's like how I've always wanted my relationship with Christ to be, where He's all I think about and my every decision is therefore based on Him.  I guess, in a way, that's becoming closer to the truth, but I won't pretend for a second that the desires to reverse poverty and to have a relationship with Christ are synonymous.

Please pray for me as I begin to let go of who I was and learn who I am.

Here's to being a stranger in your own land.

eb