The Middle

I like teaching but I wish  I was better at it. 

That’s the moral of my life for this week. Failure. The ever present spectre of failure. 

Hopefully, I will be able to take this advice and truly grow stronger from it.  But it still stings.  This has been one of these one thing after another years that just keeps kicking me in the head.  My grandfather is back in the hospital.  I’m fighting a cold.  And my life as a teacher is spiraling downwards in flames.  

Oh, and my writing, when I have time to do it, is chock-full of blocked. In working to break my block, I’ve given myself a goal of a short story/week, alternating revision with new story.  My thought is that the stress of having a deadline will kick my ass out of stagnancy. I’m hopeful it will also kick me out of this depression I’ve been swimming through this past week. 

The truth is, I think things are finally beginning to catch up to me.  I am completely depressed about Thanksgiving because my grandmother is gone.  I also feel like I can’t get ahead.  The moment things begin to get themselves together, something else goes wrong.  This week, it’s my grandfather, the fact that my teaching is a disaster, and getting sick.  Next week, who knows what it will be?  

I watched a portion of this documentary (on one of the Discovery Channels) about North Korea yesterday, and it has really clung to me, like the lingering scent of an abscess.  The documentary horrified and depressed me for many reasons: the clear signs of poverty and brainwashing of the citizens, the fact that they praised their oppressors, and the fact that anyone in the world should be deprived so thoroughly of the basic human right of freedom.  

What most struck me was the Nazi style work camps that house the extended families of people who have for some reason or another committed an offense against the government, namely the "Great Leader" and the "Great General".  These poor people are snatched from their homes and lives, often having no idea as to why, and sent to a camp where they are systematically starved and worked to death.  

The show interviewed a guard (who had defected from N. Korea) stationed at Camp 22, a camp for the families of those who had offended the government.  He explained that upon being stationed there, he was told that the residents were not human.  Food was so scarce the prisoners were forced to find, fry and eat the mice that shared their homes, but if they were caught doing this, they were likely to be beaten or even killed for this "offense". One especially chilling story that the guard relayed was of a pair of children who were fighting for a kernal of corn that they found in a pile of cow dung.  The child who "won" the fight immediately washed the kernel of corn and ate it.  The guard stated that these work camps were one of the foundations of North Korean rule; they need need to instill this level of fear in their population in order to maintain this dictatorship.

For me, this makes the abstract idea–Kim Jung Il is a nut who oppresses his people–into a nauseating and horrible reality.  For whatever problems our country has (and there are many) and for whatever problems we have in our lives, it is nothing compared to what some people are suffering in the world, at this very moment.  If nothing else, at least I have the room to fail in pursuing what I want.  I have the chance to try again.  And I can live in a society that doesn’t insist on my abject subservience and fear. 

But isn’t it just the luck of the draw, that we were born here and they were born there?  I haven’t done anything to deserve my good fortune.  All of this swirls around in my mind, and it makes me very sad.  I think a part of this sadness is a feeling of helplessness, or at least inefficacy.  A feeling that is mirrored in all aspects of my life right now.  With freedom and privilige comes responsibility, and I don’t know how well I am handling my responsibilities.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  I don’t know who I am helping.  And I don’t know what I can do to improve things.  Except to do what I usually do, keep pushing forward, making goals, and trying my best.  As best as my best can be in a single moment, which is sometimes not very good at all.

What is the role of one person? What effect can one person have? 

Everything? Nothing? 

For most of us, I think it’s somewhere in the middle.