Spoonful

Part of adulthood, I am finding, is the necessity of paying attention.

When I was a small child, I was oblivious to pretty much everything around me. If a dictator exploited the Amazon for its oil, extracting said black gold with unsustainable and unethical practices—all I knew was that I was moving. A massive political race disrupted America—I was more concerned with the fort in the backyard. A massive revolution sparked and spread to the whole Arab world, setting off wars—I was busy meeting new friends and getting a kitten.

Now I learn the meanings behind these events, the intricacies and the injustices and the results, and I reel. Could this really have been happening the whole time? Not that I should have known at that age—even the children on the front lines (figuratively or literally) might not understand much of what is happening to them, as far as I know—but…

It feels like the mask of a childhood-friendly existence has been removed, and I was unprepared for what lived behind. It is more stark and, above all, more complicated than anything I could have imagined. On a personal level, I knew nothing about myself. I knew nothing about the secret struggles of those close to me, their shames and their pains and their illnesses. On a broader level, I knew little about the communities in which I live, the ways they operate, or the work put into relationships. On an international level, I knew nothing about the struggles other communities face, racism or nationalism or sexism, the exploitation in which massive actors like nations or corporations engage, and the people who feel trapped between the clashing of these larger actors, which themselves are organized of people.  

It could make me cynical. It could make me lapse into useless complaining about how the world is going down the toilet and there’s nothing little old me could do about it because my voice sure won’t change anything, it only gets out to about ten people anyway, and who am I kidding. There’s nothing a kid like me could do about hurricanes or wars or corruption. In a post I wrote last spring, I talked about the feeling of moving a mountain with my inadequate spoon. Somehow, the feeling translates.

It isn’t my job to fix the world. That’s too much for any one person. But I suppose, in some way, my spoonful makes a difference. And at the moment, that’s all I’ve got. 

“Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. […] And it’s much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.”

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth