Stand in the Place Where you are

About a half mile away from the house in the historic district is Louisville’s “Central Park”.  The weather has been nice enough lately to ride my bike here with a blanket and book, and soak up the sun for a few hours after a lunch shift waiting tables, before the kids get off the school bus and the mother comes home from work.  People walk their dogs, play tennis, throw a Frisbee, and I sit and think.  When will I find friends, wouldn’t it do me some good to join an intramural sport, is it in the books for me to be married, will I ever be able to mold myself enough to the contemporary order of things to put my education toward a stable, satisfying job, and my upcoming 30^th birthday.  It’s usually not long before I catch myself delving into the type of “de-habilitating self-introspection” Dorothy reportedly admonished. 

Then, I remember voluntary poverty.  An untapped well, you can always drink from it better than you are, and lately I've been dabbling in other wells. I’m not quite sure the poor ever really have the choice.  They also likely don’t have laptops, brand name clothing, or entire afternoons to breathe in fresh air and check in with themselves.  Even people enjoying the flexible work schedules, afternoon frappes, and the automatic sense of accomplishment that comes with stepping into a suit or the elevator of a sky rise for work every morning suffer from fragmented thought, cloudy memory, adrenal fatigue, anxiety and self doubt.  Imagine the frail mental, emotional, and physical systems of the millions of fathers, mothers, and children whose diet consists of Mac and Cheese and hotdogs; whose sleep schedules are tacked onto the ends of constantly shifting work and/or feeding shifts; and whose leisure and quality time rely mainly on public transportation and television – perhaps a small trip to the mall or Sonic as a special treat.  21^st century poverty requires the altruist to look beyond the exterior, along the seams of the plates of the shells we all construct to help us get through the week unscathed.  In the rare occasion one feels at home, inspired, or accepted by those around them, those plates shift, and reveal deep tissues of vulnerability and uncertainty.  Oh, that those less-claimed characteristics – those dark, creeping weaknesses we all fight in the morning and take inventory of at night– will be tools for shared crosses and friendships rather than apathy, disenchantment, and exhaustion.