Priya and Hope
This morning I had a gmail chat conversation with my friend Priya who's currently building civil capacity over in India. She was telling me that she was having some doubts about her chosen profession, in general aid and development work, and I could strongly relate. Because our jobs are somewhat idealistic and based on good works, we often find ourselves relying on "the kindness of strangers" or at least our dream of strangers being kind. So what to do when men yell at you on the streets of India, or car honking in Israel keeps you up all night, or your heroes die never having finished their grand work, or you just sort of doubt anything you do will make a difference?
I told Priya, there are three types of people in this world:
1) Those who see the cup as half-full
2) Those who see the cup as half empty
3) Those who say, "Fuck the glass, let's get those people dying of thirst something to drink!"
I feel like those of us in whatever form of education or development work (or both) don't rally need justification, moral or otherwise, for what we're doing. We don't need to believe in the goodness of man (or woman). We aren't insanely optimistic, some of the most cynical people are in these fields, and it makes sense because they've often seen the worst of people. And, in truth, the sad reality is our work won't make a huge difference, but it might very well help some people who need it.
I am not angry with people who think pessimistically.
But I am sad because they have lost their place in history.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom
posted by A Mus-Ed Blogger @ 1:36 PM
2 Comments:
Good Lord, you've been writing a lot. Mind you, you appear to have been doing a fair bit as well.
There are also the people that realise the glass is completely full, as in the rare situations when a glass could be half full and half empty any possible observer is probably too busy dying to pay much attention to it. This is not to mention those that note the glass is twice the required capacity. I may belong to both groups.
Regards,
YKW
P.S. In honour of a man I used to sing about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ5S-_RLddQ
Just wanted to present you with three quotes on hope. It's up to you to decide which applies best to you:
"I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."
-Eli Wiesel
"Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
-Winston Churchill
Personally, I'd cast my lot with Wiesel and Churchill over Nietzsche any day.
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