Torn

It's late (well 1:30 am is actually early...). My eyes are drifting and feeling very sleepy but I haven't blogged in a while and it's time for a spur of the moment (should only take 30 minutes tops right?).

Let's see, yesterday I did a presentation at my church about global poverty and global health with hopes of raising awareness for such causes. In my mind people need to be active about it. It often sounds very impossible to eradicate poverty but in my mind it doesn't mean it's not worth aspiring to attain it. Pessimistically, we may never even make a dent but optimistically, we can at least change the life of one person who could help the life of another and a chain reaction starts and in the end we find out we've actually made that "dent."

But that's just a side note, not really what I wanted to say. I wanted to talk about the word "torn." One issue of approaching global poverty is being torn over where to start first. How do I know where to start? What issues seem most important to me? It's really impossible to choose one or eliminate any. Education, health (epidemics, child health, maternal health), gender equality, environmental sustainability, global partnership including financial and political transparency, or nutrition. Torn? Very much so. It's impossible to decide what needs to be "fixed" first. However the associate priest at my church pointed out it's good to be torn. Good to be torn. Not that it's stressful, daunting, and can stop us from even doing anything, but it is very much good to be torn. It can be motivating, a powerful push to untangle the knot that makes us torn and confused of what our priorities (the real ones versus the quote-unquote ones) are.

And this feeling of being torn extends to everything, every situation, every conflict. On a day to day basis I'm torn about something. I have issues with letting go. I'm torn between the past that I concretely understand and a future where that sameness I'm striving for doesn't exist simply because it can't. It sounds foolish, being torn between staying put and moving on. But things aren't always "fair" and that's okay, it's okay. Where was a going with this....it's "late" and I honestly don't remember now. But it's a relief to be torn and it's a relief to know that things just happen, for what reason I don't always know, or have to know...oh jeez, that's whole blob of shtuff to be torn about. What a strong finish E.Chow...G'night.