Socially Conscious

As salaam alaikum,

Last night, I talked to B. I didn't realize that I had fallen asleep, and then my body somehow turned on the phone, and I suddenly heard "Hello?" I tried to play like I wasn't just asleep, but he can always tell. He doesn't want to talk to me late because he doesn't want to wake me. Even though we're past the stage where I'd sleep with the phone by my bed and wait for him to contact me in the middle of the night, I still would talk to him at whatever hour of the night.

I miss him. The last time I saw him was Saturday, and I won't get to see him until Friday, meu Deus! If we're doing dinner, we'll have to figure out well in advance where we're going so it won't be the same fiasco as last time...choosing a place for nearly 2 hours. I don't want to keep a hungry man from his food.

One day, we should cook together...but I think that should be a weekend and not a weekday. Two grad students tired from a week of work will not produce a good product.

I woke up this morning to a not-impressive blizzard that will soon turn to ice, if it hasn't already. Oh well. The snow was pretty while it was just snow. The snow we got yesterday, I felt, was more meritorious of the term blizzard, even though it was nothing like what we got in January. I took my Advil, which I must take religiously on the first and second days of my cycle, but I feel less hormonal and can probably actually leave my room tomorrow without getting annoyed at my roommate.

...then I picked up my Kindle to read the news.

I haven't decided if I'll have time (or the money) to subscribe to any news source on my kindle when I can read the website for free (though with difficulty on the Kindle). However, because of reading the news, I've been up on so many things that I usually would have gotten second hand...like, I followed Tunisia and I caught Egypt's uprisings from the beginning. This is something I haven't done, really, since college and the first year of medical school.

I have my intended to thank for this, partially.

He's like me, and very socially conscious. But he is more so than me. One of the things that kept my attention when I first met him is how incredibly well-read he is in history and current events, not only of the United States and Nigeria, but the entire world. He knows a freakish amount about these things for someone who didn't major in history because in college, he self-educated himself.

So he's been watching Al-Jazeera English before all the cool kids jumped on the bandwagon to watch it for Egypt.

He's been busy with research for a while and hasn't gotten to read as much as he wanted to, but he still keeps up with current events...compulsively. He has an opinion about everything. The only thing that's different between us is that he has a bitter, disillusioned baseline about the world, and I guess mine is bittersweet.

There is a lot of bad and evil in the world, but there is also tons of good.

I just had a revelation a few months ago. The best among us, the heroes among us, are people who do good to reverse the bad that other people have put in place or are actively instituting. In the grand scheme of carnage, injury, starvation, destitution, assault, rights violations, natural disasters play a small part. People are suffering daily in the hands and policies of everyone from dictators to democratically elected individuals.

What does this discovery mean? For every bad thing that's happening in this world, there's probably a little person, or little people, on the ground, springing forth in grassroots operations, doing for self, working for their people who are suffering, and we've seen instances where that can make a huge difference and creep up to the policy level so there is still hope for everything.

Some are saved, some are not. Some problems have more activists than others. But it's not impossible. That's what I get from history and current events. Change is not impossible...

...all by the grace of God, but I don't push that with B, because I know that my belief in God is different than his belief, because of where I've been, the challenges I've faced and the resolution I've seen.

But it is refreshing to talk to him about anything happening in the news and he already has encyclopedic knowledge about it because he reads it in his free time, because he knows the history of the region, or if he doesn't know he's already up on learning it.

It's cool to be made a little bit better by someone. This is something that's within me, that I always wanted to do, and he's helping me to get back to that by being my partner in following the news.

Owly. :)