Before arriving in Tanzania, I had numerous thoughts
regarding the importance of love and beliefs in a person’s life. I have had
discussions with different people, many of whom are some of my best friends and
may or may not share the same ideas as I do, but nonetheless they have
challenged me and stimulated deep thought on important topics. “Important
topics”, I should qualify, are those which I feel deeply about and consequently
affect (and reflect) the values and proceedings in my own life. In short, they
are topics which define the person I am. I have never written about some of
these ideas, but now I have the time and at least 2 readers of my blog who may
be interested in what I have to say.
Now that I am in a situation where I have had time to think
and organize some of my thoughts, I have decided to tackle the task of putting
“pen to paper” and conveying some of these ideas in the best way I know: to
escape to a place where I am motivated to write and am able to organize these
ideas with minimal digression. I should reiterate that these ideas are only
those which are important to me and I am not advocating that they are the best nor
most appropriate way to lead one’s life. Also, you may or may not agree to some
of them, but in any case I hope you will enjoy what I have to say and be
stimulated to think a bit.
Let me begin by talking about the importance of love and
passion in life. I believe there are several different levels of love and I
will try to thoroughly explain what love means to me and why I feel as if it is
so important to love. Firstly, there is the love that you have for other human
beings, in general. In my case, this is something that I have realized is a
struggle, but important nevertheless. It is really easy to be spiteful or to
have some degree of hatred toward others, especially after they have wronged
you. Perhaps it is even easier to be envious of the possessions or
accomplishments of others. Maybe you have predetermined ideas about a person or
a race and thus, will not be proactive in taking the opportunity to learn from
and understand that person or group of people. I make the argument, however
that this is not the best way to conduct one’s life. To live with hatred or
envy of others in your heart will blind you from the experience of truly
experiencing and learning from those people. Maybe they have come from a
background very different from your own, have experienced different things, and
identify with a different culture or sub-culture, but why should this preclude interaction
with these people? Further, why should this prevent you from understanding and
embracing the differences that you share with this person or group of people? Is
your culture or lifestyle superior in some way? As I have blogged about before,
I believe that happiness is the gold standard in life and different people have
different ways of finding happiness. Maybe it is true, however, that if you
learn about other people you will also learn some things about yourself, and in
the end, find more happiness than you had ever imagined. Of course, this would
not be possible if you had proceeded with envy in your heart and hatred in your
actions. Maybe it is also possible that the happiness you might experience has
come about because you have had a rich life experience while you were
interacting with and learning from other people. Life, I believe, is about
experiencing the unknown, learning as much as you can, and trying your best to
find happiness in all that you do. If you can live life with love in your
heart, I think it will be easier to find true happiness.
As I have mentioned, I believe that love exists on multiple
levels. Different from the general feeling of love you may have for other human
beings, you have love for your close friends and love for the culture with
which you identify. I believe it is so important to realize that human beings
value their culture and identity. Why not celebrate the fact that we are all
capable of living with such passion and thus, embrace any differences we may
share? Use these differences as an opportunity to learn and grow within
yourself. Maybe you will learn more than you thought you would. Perhaps you
will meet new friends that you wouldn’t otherwise have met, and they will
affect change in you that will be for the best. Maybe you will learn that it is
possible to love other human beings that you wouldn’t have previously realized
you could. In any scenario, you may be exposed to views different from your own
and this will stimulate personal inflection that will ultimately affect the
type of person you become.
Then, of course, there is the love that you have for your
work or daily proceedings which may, in part, identify who you are. In my case,
I was formerly a competitive distance runner. This was how I identified myself,
and if you had taken that away from me, I would not have been left the same
person. I loved what I did and I loved the teammates that I did it with. Because
I loved what I did, it was remarkable how satisfied I felt once my collegiate
running career was over. I wasn’t satisfied that it was over, but satisfied
that I could be honest with myself with the effort and passion that I put into
what I did. I often wondered while I was still on the team how I would identify
myself once it was over. Perhaps this was due to vanity on my part or an
insistence that nothing else mattered besides my running, but in the end other
things came along and I was accepting of the new things because I was content.
Of course, the teammates and friends that I had strongly influenced my outlook
and the passion that I put into what I did. When you are surrounded by people
who approach their work (or in my case, training) with passion, you can’t help
but be motivated to do the same. Passion is contagious. If you proceed with
passion, you give yourself the best possible chance to be happy in the end
because you know you have been honest with yourself and with your efforts.
Ultimately, if you can be honest with yourself and with your efforts because
you have proceeded with love and passion, the chances of you being happy in the
end will be much greater.
This brings me to another point. Because we aren’t really
guaranteed anything beyond what we have right now in this one moment, we can
think of love and passion as a finite resource that we are capable of
possessing and investing. If we measure success in our life by the amount of
love we invest into our friends, romantic relationships, and proceedings, we
realize that where we are investing our love, we are investing our life*. To
clarify, we are only capable of loving ourselves, others, and our work to the
point when we are no longer alive. At this point, the basic molecules which
comprise our body are recycled for use by future life on this planet, and the
only thing left by us is the love we have given others. Hopefully we have
served as an example of the power of love for future generations and our
spirit, for lack of a better term, can live on through them. Perhaps this is
the best way to think about an afterlife, as a way to live on through others
because you have shown them love, given them love, or affected change in them
such that they are proceeding with the love that you previously had. As I have
also previously mentioned, my best friends that I have in this life have
affected such change in me by serving as examples and challenging me when I
needed to be challenged. I’m not quite sure what more a person could ask for in
their friends and role models, but it would be a pity to fail to acknowledge
the change a person has undergone by continuing to proceed without love and
passion in their life. Maybe you will affect such change in others and they
will be able to carry out their life in a similar way. In any case, maybe they
will begin to understand the importance of experiencing life with passion in
their proceedings and love in their heart. I could only hope that this will
result in a rich life experience and the realization that regardless of culture
and nationality, we are all members of the same human race, are all made of the
same basic ingredients, and for the most part, all have the same basic desires
to love and be loved.
Now as I begin to conclude, allow me to say that I have
decided that it is best to approach life and pursuits with love and passion.
The happiness that I experience when I have decided to approach my work and
relationships with love, as I have previously defined, goes much further than
the superficial happiness that material possessions can bring. If you approach
your life with love and passion, maybe you can affect others by showing them
the true happiness that passion and love can bring them. If you can’t say you
ended with the best of all possible outcomes, at least you can say that you
have given all of the love you possibly could have to the person or pursuit. Maybe
you have learned about other people, yourself, or have affected change in
another person. Perhaps once you are gone you will continue to live on in the
form of the love and passion you have given them. Realizing that this frame of
mind is capable of bringing you happiness is such a humbling thought; primarily
because it only requires a decision on your part. This, for me, is a great way
to measure happiness in life.
*“In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.
And where you invest your love, you invest your life.” -Mumford and Sons
Quick recent happenings in Tanzania: I am nearing the end of
training and will be sworn in as a PCV in less than 1 week! I am so excited to
finally be able to move into my own home and to call myself a “PCV”. I have
finished all final exams, have done well, and will be allowed to swear in. Not
that it was necessarily difficult, but I still had to meet minimum standards
with technical training and language proficiency. I will leave my host family
and Morogoro this Saturday and will spend a few days in Dar es Salaam next
week. I will then be sworn in on Wednesday the 15th and will travel
to my site on the 16th. I have so much I want to accomplish at my
school and things that I want to do in and around my house! Hopefully I can
find the time and energy for it all. I also hope to have more good news to
share about my village, school, and site, as time progresses. For now, stay in
touch, and to my friends and family: I hope you are all doing well back in the
States and I love you all! Take care.
-Travis
