Am I coming home...or leaving it?

I wrote this blog while flying home for the Holidays:

I am currently on my flight home.  It’s 2:15 in the morning in Baltimore.  It’s been a long day.  But I’m so close.

This has obviously been my first time coming home since I started living in Baltimore.  I wonder; has anything changed?  Have I changed?  Have my friends changed?  I’m confident that the answer is yes, so the real question should be, what is going to be different?

I know that my friends will be expecting me to go back to living in the same way that I did before I left.  This cannot happen unfortunately.  Actually, I’m not even sure if I would want it to happen.  I have seen too much, I have experienced too much in the past four months to pretend that I have not changed as a person.

When asked if I think I have changed I know what my answer will be.  It’s the only answer I ever give when I’m asked that question.  I answer, “I hope so.”  

One of my favorite things to look back at is how I was just a year before and to examine the ways that I’ve changed, that I’ve grown.  It is remarkable to think that every time I have done this I realize that I have changed profoundly and that the person I am now is the best person I have been.  Yet I know there is still much learning and growing to do.  It’s a never ending journey, and it’s affecting me profoundly.

So how have I changed?  I would say I’m more aware.  I always spoke about the atrocities of the world but I never experienced them first hand, or really had a vested interest in them.  I would complain about homelessness, and war, and all the other issues facing our world, but I wasn’t do anything about it.  I can finally say that now I am.  I am also more committed to the idea of living simply, as I wrote in my last entry, even though there is tremendous room for growth.  I would also like to think I have become a more open person, a more loving person, a more patient person, but I know I also need to work on my dedication to my community, and to strive to grow in my spirituality.

But will I maintain these changes when I spend this week at home?  Again, I hope so.

I’m not sure how I feel about this idea of home.  One of my favorite quotes from the movie Garden State is when Zach Braff says he no longer has this sense of home, a place where he truly feels comfortable, like the place he grew up. Instead he just has a place where he can store his stuff and return to a couple times per year.

I’ve come to the realization that this statement accurately reflects my concept of home.  In that I don’t really feel I have one.  Of course I have my mom’s place, where I am always welcome and love being with her, but things have changed in recent years.  This is no surprise.

I haven’t felt at home in Salem since my father passed, it is always a struggle for me to return.  I no longer have the house I grew up in, my own room, decorated exactly how I left it.  Instead I have a storage unit, holding onto all my childhood memories.

But how do I get this feeling of home back?  It’s something that’s been lacking for so long that it seems like I’ll never have it again.  I loved all the living situations I was in during college, and I love my community in Baltimore, but I don’t think anyone I lived with would describe them as homes.  We just have a place to stay for a year while we’re busing doing other things.

Home can be in other things though, and I feel like I have pieces of that throughout different areas of my life.  Returning to Oregon after a crazy four months away has really helped me to see how dependent I was on my family and friends before leaving and how much I’ve missed the conversations, the laughter, the hugs.

So maybe I won’t have a home in the near future.  I think I’m ok with that.  I am going to bring my idea of home back to Baltimore with me and use it in my everyday interactions with people.  How I live my life for the next eight months through the ideas and values I was raised on, will help me bring myself closer to my roommates, the other JVs, my clients, my coworkers.  And maybe, just maybe, I can once again have the sense of being home.

So Others May Simply Live - Thoughts on Simple Living

Throughout my year in JVC I am supposed to live out and be committed to the four values of JVC.  One of these values, and certainly the most enticing to me, was the concept of simple living.  I can’t really say why I was most drawn to this value, community, social justice, and spirituality are also dominant parts of my life.  

I think my mindset at the beginning of the year was that I would have the community and social justice values down pat because I would be living them out daily.  If I am not a work then I am most likely at home, and vice-versa.  And spirituality, which was a major factor in me choosing JVC over other volunteer programs, honestly was the least important to me of the values.  As you can see, I was over simplifying these values tremendously.

But I felt comfortable with simple living.  I felt that out of all the values of JVC I had the most experience with simple living.  Thinking proudly to myself of what an awesome I must be I thought about the ways I lived simply before I even entered JVC.  I had spent more than a year eating strictly vegetarian, I rode my bike to most places, I tried my hardest to avoid large chains, I recycled and composted, I tried to not buy many things like clothes, especially if they were not needed, and I tried to read instead of watching TV.

But my heart was never really in it.  I ate (and still do) a considerable amount of meat, I used my car way more than necessary, I loved places like Winco, I ate out too often, bought a lot of stupid stuff, and spent a lot of time with my ass planted in front of the TV.  Had I made progress from where I was before I tried to live simply?  Of course.  Was I doing it for the right reasons?  I’m not quite sure.

Unfortunately these character flaws have kept with me in the first four months of JVC, and it has really bothered me.  Yes I am no longer using a car, or spending nearly the same amount of money as I was, but I know I can do better.  

I had spent some time recently thinking about why JVC would make something like living simply one of its values, besides the fact that this year is supposed to be a challenging and formative year for all those involved.  And then it hit me!  Living simply is important to my time in JVC because it directly complements the other three values!  If I want to make the biggest impact on my spirituality, my community, and through the social justice issues that I am part of, I must do it by living simply.

Spirituality - Jesus called us to live simply, to sacrifice everything for the poor, and to dedicate our life serving and living with those who have less.

Community - a group of strangers making sacrifices to benefit their greater community can come together and live united.

Social Justice - living an American lifestyle while trying to end homelessness and other social justice issues is just not going to work out for you.

One of my favorite quotes is from when Gandhi said “live simply so that others may simply love.”  Wow!  And maybe that’s it!  If we can realize that living simply is not a political issue but a human issue then big things can happen.  One of the things people don’t realize when it comes to living simply is that it doesn’t have to be drastic actions and sacrifices.  If people made little steps first, it would make it much easier to take the next step once you’re ready.

And if everyone did this?  What a difference it could make!  If everyone decided to bike or take public transportation just one day a week, if they decided that they could survive with meat in only two of their meals each day instead of three, if they decided they could take a little more effort to throw things in recycle instead of the trash, if people made a little more effort to support small businesses, or check where the things they bought were made, if people bought more organic food instead of the processed crap that is killing us, if people just consumed a little less than they do now it could change the world!

These are not hard sacrifices, it is something that most everyone could do with ease.  And if people with the means to do these things did them, it would make it easier for those who had less.  Driving less, buying less plastic crap would reduce our need of oil, helping stop environmental destruction.  The 80% percent of food grown in the world that goes to animals could instead be used to feed the millions of people starving to death.  Eating healthy food, instead of fast food, could be more readily accessible to all and could help stop the major health crises facing the United States.  

Is this an idealistic dream?  Probably.  But we have reached the point of no return and if people forgot about their pride and greed for a moment we would realize that giving up just small parts of the way we currently live in this society would help the literally billions that are suffering throughout the planet.

One of the most frustrating things about my job is that it really offers no long term solutions, and that seems to be the case of many non-profit.  But this generation, seeing the problems of the world that will become our responsibility, have an amazing opportunity to change the way things are, to change the mindset of how the lives of the world citizens are viewed.  This can no longer be a political issue, we must see the value the life of every person, no matter where they live.  But to do this you must realize that you cannot continue to live your life of endless comfort.  You cannot stand up for these issues but not actually live them out.  But all it takes is some sacrifice, a sacrifice that you will quickly realize won’t kill you, in order to change the world.