Monday, June 27, 2011

Diminishing Relevance

I'm sorry it seems like I took another long break, but I've been busy! We had our Mid Service Training about 3 weeks ago and then I went to Nicaragua (Which was amazing on so many levels!!!) and though I probably could have blogged and kept up with the world a lot better than what I did, I decided not to.

This post is about Diminishing Relevance. I know my post in the pocket last year was more rant than actual subject matter, so I'll make my personal thoughts on it brief. Volunteers to some degree have to deal with the lowering level of relevance when it comes to friends and family that are not with them. A lot of people say "Out of sight, out of mind" and it is true. Keeping up a long distance relationship seems to be harder though we are more technologically advanced than we were 10 or 20 years ago. I know I got internet in my cabina for the sake of talking to people more in the States, and so far it seems like I've talked to people less. Is that to say that they have forgotten about me, naw, it just means that they are busy with their own lives. I also had to come to the realization that their world doesn't stop just because I call, and it's one of the many painful realizations I've come to in my time here.

The other side of this whole relevance thing is that the things that I used to put value in, I don't.  I may be getting a little older also, so some of this may be my age talking (I'll be 29 in September); but I feel like I am falling away from my race. I mean even growing up I was either ahead of my time or on another planet, which probably kept me out of trouble, but the point is that I don't feel like I relate to black people anym... Correction, I am still learning what my relation is to my race. Maybe I'm part of a subsection of the race, or a niche group, but I don't, and have not since childhood, feel like I belong. Hell, even people here don't recognize me as black (check the past blogs)!!! I go home and I find that things that are of importance to friends and family aren't even relevant to me (or maybe they never were), but relationships are like theme parks and you do have to pay a certain price to make them enjoyable... Wait, that may have sounded offensive...

Finally, people want to feel like they belong, no matter how much they say they don't. Why do you think Facebook is so popular and I am writing this blog right now? Everyone wants to feel as if they are relevant to some degree, like their life matters or has mattered. Would it be better than the alternative of not mattering to anyone at all? At the end of writing this, I don't have any solutions, I may even have more questions, but I do know one thing. Sometimes a little absence (and also absinthe) aren't necessarily bad things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEPV4kolz0

3 comments:

  1. Great post! I'm going to write a lot so...yeah. I could relate during my (brief; 3 months) stint in Australia. The people I talked to dwindled to maybe 4 or 5 folks on a weekly basis. I was really taken back by how little I heard from some people who engaged with me on a regular basis when I was in Chicago. Now, I was lucky to hear from them once in three or four weeks, despite my efforts to make contact. That friendship was never the same. I wasn't completely surprised by this. I've taken part in enough programs and stuff to know that most relationships are local and will not transfer over to the next phase in my life. The same ones who deny that is the case and that they will be there are the same ones who become too busy. Many friendships eventually turn into facebook notifications and pictures in a newsfeed as life keeps moving on.

    Video chat definitely helps ease the pain of long-distance relationships but I have essentially sworn them off. I need the touch of the one I love on a pretty regular basis and that screen can't hug me. I also did it for a long time and the loneliness was too much for me to deal with again, especially if there is no end in sight. I fully believe that the advances in technology have given us a false sense of ability. The international businessman can span the globe by week and be at home by Friday night; a feat unthought of a few generations ago. He video chats, calls home, etc. yet still his marriage falls apart because he's gone all the time and his family feels neglected. We're still human 1.0 in a 2.0 digital world. That scares me as I begin my post-grad career and will possibly be that guy. Geez.

    Your relationship to race is interesting. I find that traveling makes me less defined by other people's definition of my race. I also find that most black people's interpretation, desires and definition of their race to be more and more erroneous.

    Anyhow, sorry for the length. Great blog!!

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  2. Wow, what is so funny to me about this is that I felt like you had the same problem in the states. It is out of sight out of mind type of thing and in your case I think you really need that. As far as the black thing. What ruler are you using to define blackness? Is that ruler the standard? It is ok to feel like what Black Americans think is important in the states is not to you.... Yeah you have ALWAYS been ahead of your time. That is what is means to create greatness.

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  3. The ruler that I am using maybe just my standards for people around me and what people are actually doing. I think it's ok to feel that what my race thinks and what I think are separate because since I was little I've felt like I didn't belong. I guess the ruler that I am using is just where the race is right now and what's been deemed as important by the majority. That's not what's important to me right now.

    Erby, man I Love the quote on how friendships become photos and newsfeeds. It's so true. I don't even know why I am friends with half the people on facebook I'm friends with anymore...

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