The Micro and the Macro

This is gonna be a long post, consider yourself forewarned.

I started my day at 6am when the alarm went off and talked to Matt on MSN just before I left for work (it was just hitting 1am back home). Worked from 7:30am-2:30pm at the soulless coffee shop. Came home, filled out and application for the indie movie theatre downtown and had a nap. Woke up, made some supper, and then decided to take a stroll down to the theatre to drop off my application stuff. On the way, a homeless man named Sam stopped me. He's a 'rough sleeper' who camps out in the same place every day (in front of the alcohol shop right before the roundabout, across the Magdalen Bridge for you Oxford folks). We ended up talking for a whole hour. Or more accurately, I ended up listening for the better part of an hour. Sam is a self-confessed alcoholic, and was clearly drunk, and yet lucid enough to carry on a conversation (I guess you have to be when you're an alcoholic). Sam just recently found God, and though Sam's theology is a bit suspect, I could tell it's changed his life. Despite still being an alcoholic who sleeps on the street, there was a sparkle in his eye that was more than just the booze. Incredible. Anyway, I ended up buying a meal for Sam and then said goodbye, but I imagine I'll stop and chat with him again, seeing as I walk past him every day on my way to work.

So, eventually I ended up at the theatre and dropped my application off. As I walked out the door, I saw that Hotel Rwanda was playing in 15 minutes, so on a whim I turned around and went back in to purchase a ticket. Wow...what an unbelievably incredible film. If you haven't seen it, GO SEE IT TONIGHT! I don't care whether you have an exam or board meeting, how far you have to go, or how much it costs: you need to see this film! And if you've already seen it, watch it again to remind yourself how powerful it is.

My first reaction was that I wanted to be a UN Peacekeeper, but then I realized that I'm not really into the whole gun/fitness thing. Then I thought about hopping on a plane to Darfur and helping out there, but I realized that would probably be a waste of the resources available to me. So what then? Politics? Possible, but I don't know if I could handle the bureaucracy and inherent bullshit involved. In my gut, I just want to grab a megaphone and yell at people to wake up and get off their lazy asses, but then, we all know that that's not really an effective motivator. So what then? I don't know, and that's the tricky part. One thing is certain though, I've been extremely selfish lately, in many different ways, and it needs to end. Serving overpriced coffee to rich Europeans is not the best way to use the gifts that God has given me. But like I said, I don't know what is... I'd like to get a Master's degree in Critical Theory, but maybe something like Humanitarian Development would be more practical? Or social work? That's part of the problem: how to change the world? On the micro level, like hanging out with Sam for an hour every day, or on the macro level, by lobbying influential people to stop things like genocide from ever happening in the first place. Again, I just don't know, but I'm determined to figure out. I will seek advice, and I think I'm going to be praying a lot more in the coming days and weeks. Man, do I loathe the Western lifestyle...it's so quietly manipulative...without even realizing it you're lulled into this existence of false values and false worries, when in actual fact there are many, many more horrible things going on across the world.

Before I finish this up, I want to mention some choice quotes from the film. At one part, an American journalist shoots some footage of the massacre, and the protagonist thanks him, but the American replies "People at home are going to see this on TV, say 'that's horrible' and then go back to eating their dinner." At another point, he's talking to a rich hotel manager in France who has asked the governments to intervene (mostly to save the hotel) but he says "The Americans, British and French don't care...Rwanda doesn't buy them votes." And then there's a great speech by a Canadian peacekeeper (the only country who did stick around...but even then there really weren't enough of us to do anything) about how he should be hated because he contributes to such awful, systematic (and systemic) racism.

Ugh, I could go on and on about this, but it's probably best that I leave it there for now. Go see that movie! Over and out.