*pictures from Dubai & Nigeria and the Christmas party (starting on pg 5) posted on Flickr* I especially liked these:




Where do I even begin to start to explain the relfections of a mind tossed in tumult for the last 2 months? In no particular order...

Seeing The Pursuit of Happyness (sic) tonight tugged me back into the reality my lofty imagination had been hiding me from. I can't think of the last time I've ever worked so hard at accomplishing something, let alone something as important as making enough money to put your head on something other than a thin piece of paper towel placed on a public restroom floor. The comfort and ease of my (steady) job force ignorance to the everyday realities of the people who live next door to me, across the street, in every state and every country. There's never been a moment in my life when I've wondered how I was going to put food in my mouth or be able to pay for something I really wanted (not even needed). And that's not fair.

Why do I have all that I do while others are starving, shivering, abandoned by the socio-economic strata to which I now belong? Why was I born into the family I was, into the opportunities, the chances, the right connections, the abilities, the health that I was? Why was my life so easy, never forcing me to show how much I wanted the dream, never making me work as hard as the Chris Gardners of the world? It's not fair.

How can I justify my own happiness with such a superficial life when surrounded by those who struggle? How can I be who I say I am, someone who ultimately cares about her family and friends and the people equity in life over any possible materialistic thing, when I am eight hundred miles from my family, see my friends once a week, talk to my far-away friends once every two months, and am desperately trying to buy an extremely expensive sports car?

So what to do with this fiscally-incited social responsibility? I feel guilty enough for begrudging what I have been given without sweat, but with an extra helping of guilt for not doing anything with what I have been given to help others in a meaningful way. Plus I'm jaded about the ability of my meager, in the grand scheme of things, dollars to actually change anything and my ability to adequately decide what to put it towards.

Man possesses an immense capacity for hope in the face of abject sorrow. Why? Why does money have to matter? Why can't smiles be the currency of exchange in mankind's quest to be successful?

At the end of the movie, my thoughts came back around to where they always seem to settle lately - relationships. And my heart shakily agreed with my mind that if loneliness is the largest burden I'm being asked to face, if solitude is meant to be my life's struggle, then I will face my small sorrows with a smile. And my stupid, unrelenting hope, my tether to humanity, will keep reminding me of all the happy possibilities still to come.

As Chris asked, what is happiness? As I get older, I seem to find more happiness in my sorrow, in identifying who I am through being forced to question who I do not want to be, than in any concrete experience or party. It's the small moments when the sun glints through the trees at the park, with my heavy breath laced into the chorus of the song on my ipod as my feet thud thud thud along the path, and I realize that just being alive with the ability to run is enough, all I'll ever need, and that life's happiness is in that moment. That moment, woven into the scattered other moments like it -- seeing the sun slowly poke out from behind the horizon on a clear day offshore, offering to help the man trying to push his wife's wheelchair, having someone remember me at the grocery store -- make life's happiness. They make life.

So if that's life for me, does that mean that every day of surviving, every day of not being raped and keeping your child at your side, every day of seeing the sun rise in the morning and set in the evening, is life for people in Sudan or North Korea or downtown San Fransisco? Is life and its happiness merely a product of relishing whatever small moments of hope there are in the day?

It's just not fair.

And what makes me even more sad is thinking that it won't ever change. No matter how much we try, give, help, there will always be people at war with one another, people starving, unemployment, greed, sorrow.

But if we hope, if we all grasp whatever small hopes there are, that will still make trying to change worthwhile. Right?

After writing this post, I found this NY Times article which asks almost all the same questions I pondered over, but actually with some answers.