Monday, September 29, 2014

the value of emotion


Well I'm alone on the couch tonight. Anna is asleep in her wooden bed, after only about an hour of protesting, claims of dire thirst and hunger (may be hard to believe, but she is well fed and has a water bottle in her room), and failed bargaining attempts from the tired little thing.  I'm reading about faith and doubt, in a chapter on the utility of reason, and I decided even before I've finished the chapter, I want to make these words and truths somehow sink in. Become part of who I am and not just remain on a page in a book. So I'm placing them all here.

"Can any claim be more specious than to suggest that we want more objectivity, and less emotion, in guiding the course of our personal and collective lives? Emotion is not a defect in an otherwise perfect reasoning machine. Reason, unfettered from human feeling, has led to as many horrors as the crusader's zeal. What use is pity in a world devoted to maximizing efficiency and productivity? Scientific husbandry tells us to weed out the sick, the infirm, the weak. The ruthless efficiency of euthanasia  initiatives and ethnic cleansing are but the programmatic application of Nietzche's point: from any quantifiable cost-benefit analysis, the principles of animal husbandry should apply to the human race. Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that strict obedience to "hard reason" rather than sympathy for fellow humans would represent a sacrifice of "the noblest part of our nature." It is the human heart resonating with empathy, not the logical brain attuned to the mathematics of efficiency, that revolts at cruelty and inhumanity.

 In most of life's greatest transactions, where the stakes are the highest, it is to the heart we rightly turn, although not in utter isolation from the rational and reasonable. But whom to marry, when to discipline a child, when to let go of a dream, what to sacrifice and what promises to keep-- these are decisions best made when emotion in moderated but not obliterated by reason, by logic, by "scientific" thinking. And these decisions are certainly made, not in the absence of truth, but in recognizing those very truths which logic and science may be powerless to detect.

"We must consider love as an attitude by means of which certain aspects of reality become visible. The true meaning of the other as other, i.e, the meaning of the other as subject, becomes visible only through love. An attitude of preoccupation with ourselves, our own desires and interests, precludes our access to the true meaning of the other." --William Luijpen

This is not just metaphoric language. In the most emphatic and urgent meaning of the word, love reveals truth. It does not create the impression of truth; love does not merely endow something with a subjective truth--love is the only position or emotional disposition from which we become fully aware of the already present reality of the other person as more than a mere object among other objects in a crowded universe."   Terryl and Fiona Givens,  The Crucible of Doubt

Friday, September 26, 2014

friday night

I nodded.  Anna made a little fist and knocked on the maroon door. Nothing. More knocks, then the door opened-- the door next to the one we stood in front of. A woman with no teeth and a head wrapped loosely in a flowy patterned scarf looked out at us, and smiled. Two more faces appeared at the door; her 17 year old daughter, and that daughter's 9 month old son. All three came out and started talking and waving and pointing and knocking. Adar wasn't home. "You phone now!" the daughter suggested. I did. Adar told me "Stay! Don't go! I'm on my way!", a message I successfully relayed back to these neighbors. They then pounded on the door again, and this time it opened, a new face, also framed by a bright wrap motioned all of us in. "Sit you, please." said the daughter, and handed me her baby.

She then walked over, turned on the  t.v. and began scanning through rows of Somali music videos on the screen, finally settling on one, and adjusting the volume til there was no chance the upstairs neighbors weren't in on what we were up to. She grinned and began clapping and swaying in a way I don't think I will ever be able to. Baby on my lap drooled and smiled up at me. Mystery woman came back into the room and joined in on the dancing. And so did Anna. Rain began to drum on the window. And there we all were, in a dim little apartment in Salt Lake City, waiting for Adar.

"He no cry! Is very good. You very good!" the daughter said as she sat down on an office chair next to the couch, out of breath. She asked how long I had been here. America? "Yes. Me one year.You?" Well, my whole life, really. "Okay!" We then talked about her work, about English and when babies start to walk, about my pregnancy, about her mother.

Almost an hour passed before Adar came through the door, and with her six more people. She scooped Anna up, covered her with kisses, and managed to pull me into a hug at the same time. She then introduced me to the woman who had opened the door for us originally, a new roommate, a refugee form Somalia who arrived just two weeks before. Holding my shoulders, "This is Breeen. This is my best friend!" she told the room.

We walked back to Safio's room, where it smelled of unchanged diapers and spilled milk. She showed me the new machines the nurses had brought, to help Safio with breathing.  Anna and I talked to Safio, who was curled up motionless and covered with a thick blanket on the bed. Anna pet her cheeks and hands, as I listened to Adar explain the latest health struggles and successes.

Another knock, a delivery man with formula and supplies. He was welcomed in, across the dance floor (living room) to the kitchen table, where he tried to explain forms to be signed to Adar as a confident teenager translated, mostly inaccurately, above the noise of the music.


Saturday, September 6, 2014

these past seven days


Anna and I drove Eric to the airport this morning; China. Again. Everything just feels a little off when he's gone. And as Anna said  in a tiny sad voice when I told her he was leaving, "But we will miss him very much."

Earlier this week, we were also at the airport. But this time, all three of us got on a plane and went somewhere completely and entirely just to be and see somewhere new. All together. It was a rocky ocean, redwood tree filled few days, and I think all of us savored and felt grateful for most every single minute of it.

Eric had an actual camera, and I will share those pictures later. But for now, here's some phone captures of the week we didn't want to end.




























And then we were home. After putting on an assembly with a dance troupe from China for Spring Lane elementary, we drove up high to our own little mountain body of water.






















And then, it was over.

Now on to a week of 2/3rds the amount of appropriate Chipmans being in our house, finishing up those summer projects that have not quite been completed, preschool,  violin lessons, and entering the third trimester of this here pregnancy. But not without a renewed appreciation for both the vastness and beauty of this earth, and also the little family I get to spend my time here with. I find myself in love with both.

"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard