Disillusionment

(Escher)

Futility.

It's a feeling I've heard about from a lot of people recently--a professor telling me why he gave up on the field of development, a friend who went to India and lived in a village for awhile, a friend who can't find a job after graduation, interview panels questioning me about how much of a difference research really makes at the grassroots level, if researching development in India is really "fighting the fight of the world"...

It's something that I felt very strongly the first summer I worked in a slum. It was hard to be happy or to see anything positive when poverty was so entrenched all around me. People had so many issues. Issues that were overlapping with one another, affecting one another, touching everyone in the community, in the city, in the state, in the country, in the world. Intergenerational, cyclical issues that were just piling on top of one another. People were poor, sick, and uneducated. Their parents were poor, sick, and uneducated, and their parents' parents had been poor, sick, and uneducated, too. Where could anyone, let alone me, possibly start? If this one slum area, with 150,000 residents, was making me feel like this, how in the world could I possibly address the fact that India has the most poor people in the world? According to a recent estimate, the nation has over 421 million in just its 8 poorest states (Multidimensional Poverty Index developed at Oxford, based on Amartya Sen's human capabilities approach). The largest number of poor people in the world.


(Escher)

I came back after that summer unable to spend any money except for the bare essentials for months. I felt guilty and unsure of what I could possibly do in this world so full of inequality and poverty. This was important for me to go through, because I didn't realize it at the time, but it caused my mind to keep trying out new ideas, to keep searching for the beginnings of solutions. I couldn't see any other alternative. I came back to my university and took some classes. I read about the experiments being conducted by the MIT Poverty Action Lab. I went back to India and opened my eyes, focusing not only on the suffering but also on the inspirational people that were all around me--NGO workers, children from the slum who were studying hard so they could bring their families out of a cycle of poverty. Men and women and children who were working to rid their world of injustice.

No one who found any of the amazing solutions to problems in the world ever did so because they gave up. And who am I to give up when there are people out there literally fighting for their lives and for the lives of their families? Who have been fighting for generations to survive and to have a voice? Parents are struggling to put food in front of their children every day, children are struggling to balance surviving with studying, and I'm the one giving up? How does that makes sense?

Speaking specifically about the field of development, perhaps it's one of the easiest fields to get disillusioned with. And don't get me wrong--realizing the magnitude of the problems there are is extremely important. Grasping their complexity is significant, and we must pick out the problems in our respective fields so we can reform them. So we can keep changing the system, making it as dynamic as the world is. These concepts of balancing idealism with pragmatism, targeting researching to the grassroots, merging theory and reality, are ones that I'm struggling with, and they're concepts that I hope I keep struggling with. Because the difference is in the struggle.

Here is the wonderful thing: helping a single child to study could lead to an escape for her (if not her family's) cycle of poverty. And that, in itself, is most definitely "enough." If I do that, I am one human being, and I have made a difference to one entire other human being (and that's discounting any positive externalities). That's not a small success. It's huge. And it's the place that I had a chance to start addressing all of the bad I saw around me.

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.
-The God of Small Things

Keeping on trying is the next step. I owe it to myself and as a person who lives in a world full of other people. Giving up is not going to accomplish anything, but it is going to take away one mind and one heart from the fight that makes the world better. Addressing that fight through whatever corner you choose to address it from, I think is most definitely "fighting the fight of the world." Everything that each one of us does is connected to everyone else. I believe that we are each responsible for realizing this, and this realization alone should stop us from giving up

"Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide." -All the King's Men

So, this is my plea. Face and learn from the problems you see everywhere, but don't ever give up. Disillusionment happens, and perhaps everyone faces it at some point in their lives. But I think it's a motivation, not a reason to give up. Allow others to question you, your motivations, your goals, and your work. Let your experiences make you reevaluate what you're doing. Keep changing. But don't let anything make you walk away from the work or the people you love. Have faith in yourself and in those around you. We're the ones that get to make a difference today, tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives--through research, through medicine, through media...pick the avenue you love and go for it. Change paths if you like--once, twice, three times--but don't ever stop. Constant reevaluation, perseverance, connection, and love are how we go about changing an unjust system. I have to remind myself of that at times, but it always ends up coming back. It's my mantra and I plan to stick by it.


(Escher)

"A man goes out on a beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. "What are you doing, son?" the man asks. "You see how many starfish there are? You'll never make a difference." The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. "It sure made a difference to that one," he said."
-Hawaiian parable