Actually written on October 15, 2008….
I was reading Three Cups of Tea by David Oliver Relin and Greg Mortenson, last week. Three Cups of Tea is the true story of how Greg Mortenson began his non-profit, Cental Asian Institute, by promising to build a school for a small villiage in Pakistan after a failed attempt to summit K2. Wonderful book!
Anyway, so I’m reading a book about Pakistan during some downtime, when the phone rings. The man on the other end asked, in what I then thought was an Indian accent, if an Elizabeth was there. This is not too strange since people call asking for Elizabeth all the time. When I informed him that she wasn’t there, he asked if he could ask me a few questions. So I answered a line of questions like “How often do you brush your teeth?” and “If you have a severe toothache, would you seek dental care?”
Then, the last four questions went as follows, “How old are you?”
“22.”
“What is your highest level of education….high school?”
“I have a bachelor’s degree.”
“Oooh. Okay. How many people are in your household?”
“One. Just me” Slight chuckle from both parties.
“How much money do you make in a month?” I answered.
“Okay well, thank you so much for answering my questions”
“Wait so can I ask you a question?”
“Sure…”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Pakistan” He then went on immediately to tell me that it saves the money, which I can only assume is a reaction to Americans getting defensive and angry…so I respond with….
“What time is it?”
“3 after midnight.”
“Oh my goodness. When do you sleep?”
After we both chuckle a little bit, he asks, “How long do you plan on being single?”
“Until it changes,” I chuckled. After hearing what I thought sounded like “until God wills it,” I replied back with, “yeah, until God wills it.” So then he proceeded to explain to me that because he was Muslim they say it in Arabic and tried to teach me how to pronouce it.
Anyway, it totally made my week, not to mention the fact that it was a great example of the shrinking nature of the world with globalization. Globalization more often than not created a lot of conflict between people, which is why I was glad to have such an experience since I do hope that as time progresses it improves.
The real exciting and scary reality is that we have a choice. We can attempt to live and thrive with the other people in our world. We can try to speak with them and interact with them. We can attempt to help them and learn to be helped by them. However, we can also choose to dip into our vast pool of fear (and do not be fooled into thinking that you have conquered your fears). With these fears we can choose to indulge them and escape into our own worlds and when confronted with the worlds of others we can fight their existence by failing to listen and continuing to compete. We choose. And if we choose to engage others they cease to be others and become part of the us, the we, our friends, and our family.
Okay so I know that was a bit of a hippy rant but….deal with it.
