The Great Unwinding

My American life has been set up to celebrate and honor self-sufficiency and personal space. I set an alarm clock for every morning, I use password-protected technology, I sleep in my own room, I work on papers and projects by myself, and I eat in restaurants when the meals are made and ordered for one (because my taste may be different from my neighbor’s taste). In college, the Type A parts of my personality became proud of my capability to rely on myself and I considered my growing sense of sufficiency a marker of adulthood. We value that sufficiency in this culture, to the extent that it is often equated with maturity.

The benefits of personal space and self -sufficiency can be countless in a culture built around those principles. Driving trips take shorter periods of time; I do not need to rely on other people to fix some of my problems; I ultimately have more control over my schedule, my decisions, and my life (or so it seems most of the time). That being said, I think something is getting lost between the cracks of the lives we are building.

It seems that all of my friends and I yearn to connect with others, to the point that we are willing to exploit the interesting, personal and meaningful things in our lives to gain online recognition from anyone who is willing to give us the time. We collectively fight for internet/financial/personal privacy because of our right to it, and yet so much of my Facebook feed is consumed by personal pictures of This Morning’s Tea Next to My New Favorite Succulent and posts detailing My Most Recent Revelation about Antiquing. There are many factors contributing to my need for love and acceptance, but there is a certain level of connection that is lost when I opt to do more of life on my own. In the absence of community, I find myself tempted to turn my social media experience into an online community-seeking venture.

When I describe the past year to friends and family, conversation inevitably circles back to the social nature by which work, society, and even my IJM office functions. Things that I would normally consider a one-man job are actually a group project that requires three times the time to complete. For the first time, I have offended friends by not asking them for help in hiring an electrician. Naps are a social event. Moving into a people-oriented culture necessitated a transition that was far from comfortable. 

Somewhere between grimacing through shared meals and common decision-making, life became less about the goal and a bit more about the people and the process of getting things done. I found myself paying less attention to the clock (much to my brother’s chagrin) and choosing to be ok with doing life as a group project. Living in a country with 1.2 billion people necessitates that everyone make room for everyone else, especially if your next door neighbors are extended family members.

Living in South Asia confronts me with the real fact that I control very little of my life. One could call 2013 “The Great Unwinding” of the uptight coils that have historically supported and defined my identity. As nice as it would be to lay claim to that process, it only took place because of the persistent intrusion of people into the empty spaces of my life. I am forced to humbly acknowledge (yet again) the beauty of doing life in community. I look back and thank God for those who [un]knowingly pulled and stretched those coils, forcing me to surrender to the ebbs and tides of South Asia.

As I sit at Gate E7a, my heart is preparing to jump back into the waters and swim with my sisters, brothers, and friends living across the ponds. I look forward to a year of celebration, to a year of dancing in the (metaphoric?) streets over IJM’s work, and a year learning how to intentionally bring “life together” way with me wherever I go.

Looking forward to it,

Alice

If you pray, please pray for my office as it grows. Pray for grace, as I adjust to what will be a new work environment and pray that God is ultimately glorified as a result of our expansion efforts!