There is a volunteer opportunity with the Oberlin Schools Farm Cooperative behind the Pleasant Road School (Boys and Girls Club). This Saturday from 8:00AM to Noon is a work day in the newly plowed garden. If you have anyone that is interested in locally grown foods, or is just looking for some volunteer hours, everyone is welcome. You can read the press release HERE.
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I've been doing a lot of reading about poverty for the syllabi I am writing. The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler. Bridges Out of Poverty by Ruby Payne. Savage Unrealities:Uncovering Classism in Ruby Payne's Framework by Paul Gorski. Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich. Underlying all of it seems to be the question "How can poverty exist when the American Dream dictates that hard work should pull people up through the economic ladder?" There is no simple answer. Some of the stories had hardworking people that just didn't make enough money per hour to cover all their costs. Some people just had bad luck. Some people got caught in the system. Some people made controversial lifestyle choices.
The more I read, the more I realize I'm looking at life through a Southern, middle-class, moderate 20th C. Christian, academic lens. On some level, people are universal and seek out the same things; physical needs and belonging somewhere might be a good place to start. Yet the outlooks they have on life are not universal; it's that random human element that guarantees there is someone with a different way of looking at things out there no matter what I think. When I was little, I was convinced there had been so many humans who had come before me that surely every single experience had been experienced, every emotion felt, and every human problem confronted. If only, I thought, we could see what they did and learn from their experience and not repeat their mistakes. Looking back was where the answer was. World peace would come from learning from others who have come before, not necessarily from any new idea. It fell into line with that snazzy quote: "Those who don't read history are doomed to repeat it."
Now that I've gotten older and lived life a bit more, I see holes in my hypothesis. One major oversight I made is forgetting that everybody has to grow up and live; everybody takes their own path. Another major hole is that I assumed everybody thought like me. I assumed everyone would come out at the same mental place after growing up--my world peace depended on everyone looking back on humanity's collective experience together. I assumed everyone wanted world peace and that they would be willing to learn and be introspective. Once you start getting down to it, to truly walk in another person's shoes takes significantly more dismantling of my own assumptions, morals, and beliefs that I had previously thought. It's one thing to try and look at somebody's perspective through your lens, and a completely other one to drop your lens and see what they see.
The other day someone suggested to me the golden rule of Treat others as you want to be treated isn't all it's cracked up to be, and that I should try Treat others as they wish to be treated.
It's an exercise not only in walking in somebody else's shoes, which is based on the assumption we all have similar experiences put in the same place, but also recognizing the difference between what you want, what they want, and what you think they want.
Tricky stuff.
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