PERSONAL IS POLITICAL
All this time, I have talked about my journey to understand what this constructive force is that binds humanity, the one worldview, the prism, the schema of our consciousness that speaks to what we must do, what we should do, what our inner souls after shedding its tears cry to transform this world we live in into a future we can be proud of ---for our children, for our friends, for ourselves, for our parents, for the "One". This emotional spring of motivational activity and perspective is sometimes referred to as "love," and I have so far treated myself as a subject journeying in discovery of this human trait, a natural treasure, priceless to the core, and at the very least beheld as miraculous and transforming.
But what I want to tell you now is what I have come to understand. That we are all fellow travelers, searching for that metamorphic realization, both metaphorical and material, of our lives, our essence, our being. I have a story to tell, as we all do, in this complex nature called life. And what I have to offer is a migrant story, with all the hellos and goodbyes, to friends and foes alike, to hopes, to dreams, to the "was" and to the anticipated "will". The way I am, how I perceive the world, how I long for a better future, ...how I love and want to love, is in many ways brought up by the effects of migration.
I migrated in spatial terms, from the country where I was born to where I am now. I migrated temporally as well, from me ages ago to now. I also migrated in my thinking, and in my feeling. In effect, we are all migrants, but what is qualitatively different from my story and others (maybe yours, but then again maybe not) is that I migrated to a world completely foreign to what I had, and abrupt. I have had to struggle with the culture of a stranger-people, and in so many ways I resisted the change. But, in the sometimes satirical, sometimes ironical twist of things, I have found my place. In the continuous flow of the waters, I somehow came back home. Like Ursula LeGuin wrote in his book
The Dispossessed,
"It was a joy to [Shevek] to come back... He would always be one for whom the return was as important as the voyage out. To go was not enough for him, only half-enough; he must come back..."
And then he adds,
" [But] 'you shall not go down twice to the same river, nor can you go home again.' That [Shevek] knew... [Yet] 'your relationship to the river, and the river's relationship to you and to itself, turns out to be at once more complex and more reassuring'... [Because,] 'you can go home again...
so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.'"
I am slowly realizing that what I am now is brought about by the world I live in. In political parlance, I am influenced by the socio-economic and political forces of our times. Thus, personal is political. We all are affected by these forces, whether we are conscious or not. But the reverse is also true. In my doing of things, I affect the world, even in small ways. I then become political as well, because I want to. I want to help. I want to give back to my people, my family, my friends, my "love." And I am not saying this because I claim to be a puritan, nor do I claim to be the all-good superman-savior of the world. On the contrary, I can be the sadistic person, a thoughtless, heartless fanatic of some misplaced virtue, as I once was. Now I see that "loving" is the only way to go. It is the only thing that I find meaning. Maybe in a roundabout way, I am really doing this for myself, that I'm really being selfish, because I have to satisfy my longing by giving of myself to others. But this is foolish talk. It is in this crossroad of interests that the term selfish and selfless disappears, that the word "me" and "you" simply dissipates into thin air. It is in this understanding of life that I now find the converse of the phrase to be true --- that political IS personal.
I can really go on and on with this, but I think I better stop before I start to bore you. But before I stop, let me warn those who read this blog ---I will take this train of thought again some other time. So don't blame me if you get bored again. You are now forewarned.
Ok. That's all. :)
