Written by Holly Bell, Director of First Impressions
What are you thankful for? November holds our national holiday of Thanksgiving. A long-standing tradition in my family is to invite folks - who cannot go “home” (usually international college students/faculty), or who don’t have family to join for whatever reason - to our house for a large meal. It’s a wonderful experience each year, to witness so many new friendships being formed and to hear about cultures and traditions different from my own. We start the meal by naming one thing that we are grateful for at that moment.
The other day, I heard an interview with Abdi Nor Iftin on the radio. Have you heard of him? He wrote a book, Call Me American, which I haven’t read yet, but it sounds like a good and humbling read. I hope to read it soon! He and his family were Somali refugees - in Kenya, I think. He has become an American citizen and one of the things he said that caught my attention was that (in his opinion) to be an American means to complain a lot. His point is that America is a country with freedoms and privileges that millions of people in the world don’t have and some can’t even dream about. He said he was talking with some American friends who were griping about gas prices (or something like that) and he said… “What are you complaining about? You have hot water… on demand!” He gave other examples, too, but that one stuck in my thoughts. Can you imagine living in a place where you did not have access to warm water?
While we do have unhoused neighbors and those less economically advantaged here in the Twin Cities, I can see his point about American citizens, in general. We have the privilege to openly speak about controversial subjects, to walk around where we want to go, and the privilege to do what we want to do. Of course, because I volunteer with people who are re-entering our community from prison, I know that Abdi was generalizing. Not ALL Americans share the same rights. Not every American does have hot water at their demand, but I respect his point of view.
Many, many years ago, I went on a two-week trip with my children to (inland) Jamaica. I may have written about this trip in a previous Huddle. We were on a team (of about 10 people) that rebuilt the house of an elementary school principal which had been heavily damaged in a hurricane. This house was right next to the school, so we were lucky enough to interact with the school children there, too. That trip taught me so much about all of the things I take for granted in my 1st-World life, being born an American. One is the ability to take a hot shower in a clean and private place. In Jamaica, after building, repairing, and learning cool construction techniques like putting lime juice (the limes were hand-picked from the trees all around us) into the paint to make it go further, we were always hot, tired and sweaty at the end of each long day. The shower we used was on one side of a building and the water came from a large container on the roof that held rain water. We had to conserve the water so that each of us could clean up in the cold, slim trickle that came out of the faucet. I remember how glorious my first shower back in my apartment felt. And somehow, as time flew by, so did that tremendous feeling of gratitude for warm water… on demand. If I don’t think about that trip in particular, I tend to take each drop of warm water that I use for granted. Now, don’t get me started on water conservation or earth’s future, but instead, do a little reflection about all that we take for granted, as Americans. We have so much to be thankful for. How can we, each of us, spread the “joy?”
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday break!
On we go,
Holly