Okay so I'm eating potato chips here in my classroom at ICTC in Stilwell, OK... and I'm doing a little thing called pondering. A really gross, albeit poetic, side of me wants to compare it to cud chewing... the difference being that my cud is metaphorical and the chewing is mostly my aforementioned pondering. How about I go ahead and tell you what I'm am thinking about. A couple of weeks ago I began this thing called a quote book. It was inspired by a character from a Karen Kingsbury novel ( I love Karen Kingsbury). She would take her favorite quotes and write them in this journal. Now, I will say that I tweaked the idea a little and turned mine into a sort of scrapbook (Scrapbooking is my second favorite... right behind Karen Kingsbury novels) and there isn't a theme to the quotes, there are some that are inspiring, but then there are funny ones as well. You see I am sort of a nerd, meaning that I like things like video games and scifi shows like Star Trek and Dr. Who. The result of this is that I wanted to put in quotes from my favorite evil robot GLaDOS, and funny things that River Song said in Dr. Who. So far there is no Star Trek... Yet. That could very well change. The point is that most of my quote book isn't inspiring or heart felt like it's name sake. It's dorky and very much "me"(It's crazy, almost bipolar, and there is no theme... yup, me in a nut shell). So, knowing this you can imagine that it was a shock to find a meaningful quote that I loved. This is it, "You have never lived a perfect day until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." by Ruth Smeltzer. I read this while aimlessly looking around on the Internet, you know how you can be looking for one thing then end up somewhere completely different? That is what happened. I was just about to move on to the next pointless page or to update my facebook status when the meaning of that quote hit me square in the guilt bone... What do I do that I don't expect to get payed back for? I tried to think of things. And I decided that I help my little brother Lawrence out. But I realized that I certainly expect my brother to help me because I help him. Then I thought how about school? I want to become a Lawyer... I will end up helping people and that has to make me worthy to forget about all the other things I could do, as if helping others is an extra credit assignment that we can shirk, then I realized that this was lame, too... I will get paid for my job and the second something happens in my school that I don't like, I will complain. I started to panic over the fact that my list of good deeds was pitifully short and shame settled in. Like the story I posted, We Danced, I have this sneaking suspicion that our faults sort of camp out in our hearts after we commit them... like they never leave us. It's easy to taste the proverbial apple... putting it away is usually the hard part. So what was I supposed to do? Walk outside for an hour until I found a hobo and buy him a burger? Then I could go back to my self-centered routine... I could finish my chips and call it a day... I could even go so far as to call it a successful one. So why didn't that seem like enough? It just seemed like everything I did was for me. I washed the dishes for my dad, but really I did it because I wanted to have bowls for cereal the next morning (we go through bowls fast).I have started running, but that is because I feel bad, and I could loose a little weight... there are WAY too many I's in those sentences! I thought about the running thing and considered all the malnourished kids who could stand to gain weight. A sad little picture of how I imagined prim from the Hunger Games ran through my mind. What was I doing? Was I so dependant upon my own little world that when I thought of hunger I had to dredge up some memory from a fictional book? As if the world didn't have enough. I would love to tell you that I have changed my ways... that I now volunteer and spend all my time feeding the hungry. But I don't. I have just told all of you that I'm sitting in an air conditioned building eating potato chips right now! However, there is a question I want to present you... and me. Will we stop walking around with blinders on denying the truth? Will we see the needs around us and accept that although it may be difficult it is our job to stand? Become the hands of those that can't reach and the feet of those who can't walk? What will it take to get us out there? To get us to taste and smell the abrasive skin of the world and embrace it... believing that we can make a difference?
-KC-
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