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| Damaraland Desert Elephants, Namibia, 2012 copyright2012byFeliciaLowery |
“Be the change you wish to see in the world”
Mahatma Gandhi
After a 1.5 year hiatus from my blog project Finding Hope In
A Fractured World, I find myself returning to the place that inspired it in the
beginning. For the past year
I have often thought and have had others tell me “it’s time to start writing
again."
What paused me
for so long? After a
difficult interpersonal experience that caused a loss of confidence, it became
harder to imagine writing again, much less to allow any other person to read my
words. My heart healed after a lot
of time and introspection, but I
still felt afraid of sharing
myself in a public way. It was
quite recently that I came to see this as a rare streak of perfectionism within
myself. I had told myself
that my perspective on suffering and hope in the world was not needed and not
unique. Who am I to self-publish
something not vetted by editors, publishers, experts? Yet, I continue to find myself drawn to many excellent
home-grown blogs and looked forward to each new installment of my favorite
authors. I love those brave
bloggers! I am grateful that we
live in a time when we can communicate around the world with many people in an
instant. Many readers have written, called, and
asked “when are you coming back?
You’re writing has meant a lot to me." Kind, supportive words indeed, but still not the
motivation I needed to move beyond my personal writing crisis.
It wasn’t until my daughter, Isabella, and I hatched a plan
to return to Africa this summer that my writing life and even one of my larger
purposes in life came back into focus.
When I initially started this blog, it
was a response to the majestic beauty of the African bush and all of her
inhabitants transposed with the extreme pain, suffering, darkness and chaos I
had seen in my travels through southern Africa four years ago [see Heartache of
the Elephants in which I write about the impact of my first journey to Africa]: http://www.findinghopeinafracturedworld.com/p/essays.html
I felt utterly confused and hopeless about our world. It seems that we are destroying the planet and everyone and everything that inhabits it as quickly and ruthlessly as we can. Learning of the plight of so many animals on the verge of extinction and so many children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic was heartbreaking. Witnessing the hatred and fear of post-apartheid South Africa was shocking. But coming home and finding that although we have made great progress in racial relations; fear, confusion, and hatred toward the “other” remained strong right here in America. After the warmth and friendliness of travel personnel in five different countries, arriving in the USA and going through customs in Houston felt like a "welcome home" sucker punch. There was such overwhelming hostility and debilitating fear in our great land, the land that has historically provided opportunity for the poor, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, everyone who is seeking a better life, just as our ancestors did. Indeed, our collective paranoia and confusion seem to be on the rise as we ponder potentially electing a man who has been compared to Hitler. We scapegoat migrants, pillage the earth, and shoot each other up on a regular basis. It seems that light and dark, good and evil, are partners.
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| Felicia flirting with hippos in Namibia. |
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| Isabella at the Cape of Good Hope, Southernmost tip of Africa in Capetown. |
I felt utterly confused and hopeless about our world. It seems that we are destroying the planet and everyone and everything that inhabits it as quickly and ruthlessly as we can. Learning of the plight of so many animals on the verge of extinction and so many children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic was heartbreaking. Witnessing the hatred and fear of post-apartheid South Africa was shocking. But coming home and finding that although we have made great progress in racial relations; fear, confusion, and hatred toward the “other” remained strong right here in America. After the warmth and friendliness of travel personnel in five different countries, arriving in the USA and going through customs in Houston felt like a "welcome home" sucker punch. There was such overwhelming hostility and debilitating fear in our great land, the land that has historically provided opportunity for the poor, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, everyone who is seeking a better life, just as our ancestors did. Indeed, our collective paranoia and confusion seem to be on the rise as we ponder potentially electing a man who has been compared to Hitler. We scapegoat migrants, pillage the earth, and shoot each other up on a regular basis. It seems that light and dark, good and evil, are partners.
When returning home in 2012, I had a period of spiritual darkness
as I pondered all of this, and came to see, that the remedy for myself, was to
consciously search for the good. The light. The creative. To notice, every single day, what the
average person was doing to create peace and love in their own
environment. I was convinced
then, and have become even more certain, that as much as we may long for an
institution, a government, a politician, a movement, a Bernie or a Trump, to
save us, that it is really up to us to save ourselves and each other, to care
about the lives of others as we do our own. To value our precious and fragile planet and all of it's beings instead of treating it as a commodity to be consumed. We are the ones who create our collective societies and
always pointing a finger to “them” or finding that “us” is the victim is not
where change happens. Change begins
when we make a conscious decision to treat the cashier at the grocery store
with kindness, speak with respect to a homeless person, when we willingly let
others in on the freeway, when we see the stranger as part of our own family, when we sit with those who are dying, when we tutor children. Change begins when we cease our addiction to righteous outrage and instead roll
up our sleeves and dig in to serve a larger purpose and take action. Yes, the world is a mess, so what are we going to do about it?
To be clear, I
am a believer in collective power, movements, education, and the power of
larger groups and even governments to make changes for the good, especially in
protecting the most vulnerable and powerless among us:animals both wild and
domestic, children, elderly, disabled, the poor and disenfranchised, the earth itself. We must collectively speak truth to power and stand up with
our neighbors and be heard. But when we look to others to make the shifts we want and need to see, we negate our own power to be change-agents every single
day in profound, practical and effective ways. It is important to fight for justice, to stand with those
who are oppressed, to add our voices to the causes we find meaningful. There
are multitudinous ways in which we can serve. Learning to become change-agents
in our daily lives with each personal encounter we have, can be just as
powerful as an election, a movement, an organization and probably more.
In November, 1983, I
wrote about my highschool friend Doug‘s project Bedstart.
I have
watched how Doug's conviction that no-one should have to sleep on the floor
become reality for thousands of persons in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area
where he lives. One man’s simple act of standing up with those who have very
little has blossomed into a much larger movement. I meet people every day like Doug. People who are not waiting for “someone” to do “something”. People who
are simply wading into their world and doing what seems most pressing. These people are a voice for abandonded
animals, for abused children, for those with painful and debilitating diseases
with no known cure. They are working quietly and cheerfully to make money for a
cause they believe in passionately, to support the work of organizations they believe in, and to simply help their neighbor anyway they can. They change unjust laws, they educate others, they reach out into the unknown with hope that they can make life better for even one being. They are you and me.
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| Isabella and I, so tiny next to an iconic Baobab. |
Isabella and I are returning to Africa in July and will be
revisiting our beloved elephants, reuniting with old friends, meeting new friends, and exploring the
ancient heart-beat of Africa. This
is the back-drop of my own reentry into public writing. Finding Hope in a Fractured World Goes
to Africa. I will be providing a
mix of interviews with people I meet along the way who are doing their part to
make the world a better place, and will also share my own thoughts as we travel, and want to invite you to come along. If you would like to get a sneak-preview, please check out first travel blog Felicia In Africa for stories and photos of our first 8 week sojourn in 2012. http://feliciainafrica.travellerspoint.com
In quieting my perfectionism I am writing in spite of the
mistakes I will make, the readers who will disagree, and the masses who will have no interest. I
am writing to find hope for myself, once more and I hope to provide hope for those
of you who are in greatest need of
it right now. I will also be adding updates about those I’ve written
about in the past. Do you have a
story to share? What’s one thing
you do to find hope in this fractured world?
Shalom, Shanti, Peace,
Felicia
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| Wild-Dog in South Africa, Isabella's favorite sighting. These animals are on the edge of extirpation in South Africa, and extinction elsewhere. I wonder what we might do to save them and all of the others who are pressured by the forces of the modern world? |
copyright 2016 by Felicia Lowery
I love what you have written Felicia. It is so very easy to feel completely overwhelmed and frustrated by what is going on in this world. What you said about being a "change agent", I think that is a pretty good response, looking forward to hearing about your trip.
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