I haven't had much time to clear my head and think. Events, both domestic, personal and international, are coming too fast to really contemplate them and their connections.
I made one revelation this week, however. I was explaining to a dear friend of mine (who shares a name with a great Wes Anderson female) why I want to be a journalist. It's been something I've been considering since the untimely death of James Folley.
Internationally stationed journalists are predominately freelancers, people who go to far off and oft dangerous locales not only on their own dime but at their own risk. Some do it to get the break-through story. Some do it to travel. Some do it for the love of writing. I have decided that I want to be a journalist in order to teach. Today, the average news consumer half-retains an evening program's "A Block" (a.k.a. everything before the first commercial break). That information has been tailored to (a) fit the time limits, (b) be digestible to the everyman, and (c) get out fast. Journalists and their companies alike compete with social media scourges that have the potential to add fuel to the fire. There isn't much time to investigate a story for a few minutes before it has exploded across Twitter, Facebook, what-have-you. We miss a lot of vital information. I miss a lot of vital information.
Anthony Bourdain wrote "I remember the moment I first realized I've been living my whole life in black and white. It was like discovering a color I never knew existed before". The moment I heard this in the very beginning of Parts Unknown Thailand, I knew I had felt it before. I am a huge proponent of knowledge and consider teachers on par with the divine. With so much misinformation and lack of understanding in the world, it seems my only path is to give people that awe-inducing moment. I want to be the bringer of the revelation. I want to teach by understanding and communicating the truth as people see it.
Understand this: fact is one thing. Perspective is another. What you and I see are likely to be vastly different. There is beauty in acknowledging that truth. Some say they do, but even I question if I do understand what I just wrote. We would like to put opponents immediately on our "enemies list" and deepen the "us versus them" divide. If we persist in this worldview, we will never know a solution to any crisis or conflict. It makes the checkpoints to success denser in numbers and increasingly difficult to pass.
I would like to fill that chasm in a little in my life time. I would like to be the modern Dame Freya Stark; I would like to think she would agree with her contemporary, T.E. Lawrence, who wrote to his parents from Karkemish, "Foreigners come out here always to teach whereas they has much better learn".
Eliminate the assumptions and guesswork, a relationship becomes easier. If people went knowing their intention was to whole-heartedly learn, to not judge until saddled with enough information, the world might back a little off the edge of destruction.
I felt the need to write tonight and this is what has spewed forth. I don't know if this is a particularly noble cause, but it doesn't matter. Knowledge is power, and its pursuit is what drives me. I figure if I can put that energy into something mildly beneficial, I could get through to someone somewhere.
Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for spring 2015. I'll take a trip and have the chance to write lengthy, literary journalistic piece(s). All the best to hope, I guess.
CLE
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