My dad wrote back after reading my last post “Still trying to figure out if you loved India the most or if the negatives so outweighed the positives for you.” I just want to reiterate that I absolutely loved India. I know that my story must not have made it sound like that but that was one five minute part of my entire six days there. Yes, it was probably the most impacting experience of my time there, but what everyone on the ship is discovering is that we learn a lot from these negative experiences and we can do something positive with our feelings about them.
I had an incredibly long debate with a few of my friends yesterday about making a difference. One of my friends said that one person CANNOT make a difference themselves; I said that one person can make a difference but cannot change the world, and my other friend said that he thinks one person CAN change the world. Our focus was really on poverty and solving poverty and all of that and came from talking about how hard it was to see all the poverty and not be able to do something about it at that specific moment and this specific visit. The point is though, that it brings out the desire to take action, to do SOMETHING, to make a difference to one single person or one single family just by spending time with them or building a house, school or bathroom for a community that lives in hutments, goes to school under a tree, and uses the street as a bathroom. It changes your perspective, it SHOULD change your perspective, it’s hard not to change your perspective when seeing poverty and interacting with people living in it. So whether or not it made me feel awful to not be able to give a child my leftover food, or go to an orphanage and just leave the kids there knowing that I am eventually going back to an amazing home and family, it is the most wonderful thing knowing that not only did my visit there open my eyes, and I can share my experiences with others who can share it with others, etc., but eventually through some form or another, I can make difference in an Indian person’s life and that is the most positive piece of knowledge. I didn’t say it, but I clearly plan on returning to India to do a lot more service-oriented work rather than just the straight up touring with a few hours total of service visits.
I also want to talk about the smiles. Wherever you are reading this from whether it is my friends abroad or my family at home in the US, the next time you are walking around the town or city you are in pay attention to the mouths of the people around you. Try waving to someone that you don’t know. Do they smile when passing you? Do they wave back or look around trying to figure out if you are waving at them or someone behind you? If you look at my pictures, the smiles stand out. You see smiling children and adults in the slums, smiling children in the orphanages, smiling vendors outside their stores and stands, smiles everywhere. When you wave a person that you have never had any interaction with on a street or from the bus, they excitedly wave back. There is such joy in so many people’s faces no matter what conditions they are living in. It is unfortunate that the whole world cannot be like that. But it makes you learn, it makes you grow, it makes you rethink the notion of appreciation. Some of these smiling people have NOTHING. A baby wearing just a shirt urinating on the side of the street while all the cars pass by; a disabled old man wheeling himself on a homemade wheelchair contraption living on the street, not even begging you for money as you walk by and stare; a mother with her barely dressed children walking through the muddy and bug filled marketplace… I have all these images constantly rolling through my mind, and all of these people are smiling. That leaves me with a positive feeling. It leaves me realizing that there is no reason for me to not spend the rest of MY life smiling. It makes me realize that I have it not only good, but great, excellent, as good as it gets. I am so happy that I was able to leave India with these feelings. That despite all the awful things I saw, I was able to take out the positives and be inspired by the incredible people of India. I will miss being able to walk through a marketplace that is too dirty and poverty-filled to even potentially exist in the States, and wave to strangers and have them smile and wave back. It’s impossible not to.
I hope that this helps balance out my last post a little. It’s not the most well-written thing I know. More to come later!
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