A lesson learned

I've been running out of words to write and sentences to finish lately. Been going through a low season when it comes to writing. It has to do with me being tired from a pretty rough time this spring with the kids in Vårberg. It's a tired thing in itself to realize you're suddenly at that point where you feel you're out of touch with why you're doing what you're doing. That's why Vårberg's been taking a break on me, or rather why I've needed to take a break from Vårberg. With school and all it got too much with too many people. And it's a good lesson. It is. And that's really what I wanna write on here.

I think this is something that especially people working within the Human Rights field can (and should probably) relate to as it's a work that will always be concerned with people AND people's will to confront injustices.

During a time of rest I'ven been thinking a lot about how we do this work; How I think we need to feed on hope to act upon injustices. May sound very simple and in a way I think it is, but I've found that at times when I feel discouraged it's because I've been doing this backwards. I've been feeding on the injustices to then try to act with hope. And it's so easy to go there when you're working with human rights. Where you end up in that place where you think that all you know you can do is to see what others don't. And you get cynical. Which doesn't do anyone any good, the least yourself.

What's frustrating for me is that I find this in my education as well, and sometimes when I come home I need to just stop and think about why I should not surrender to cynicism when that's what's being modelled to me in school. When I hear that we have an asylum system that sucks while having close to 40 million refugees in the world...

By saying this I do not mean that we cannot or should not be angry, mad, frustrated, filled with rage and so on over the injustices we see being made to people around us and in our work. NO! We need to be mad about the injustices as it prooves to ourselves and others that something's just not right. It's a must not a maybe if you're really out to do something that will make you work for the better I think.

But if our committment to work for human rights and people who are suffering stay there, at the feet of our own rage, it will probably not go any further than that. At least not for the one mad. In the long run.

And as I love people and as I get so sick and tired of us messing everything up for each other, I still find hope in God, creation and the inter-connectedness of us all called humanity. And I'm not writing that here thinking everyone could or should relate to that. I'm just saying it to be honest with why I have hope. They're not the only reasons but they're big ones. This is not my point here though, what I wanna say concerns the importance of having hope. Hope as to why something good can be done when you suddenly see none of it.

At some point when I'm filled with frustration, staring at my own two feet, I have to let justice triumph over rage somehow. This justice that I'm fighting for. When all I see is injustices being made to the poor and hungry, the homeless and lonely, the refugee and the outcast, how do I do that? Hope has to be the way. So that when I feel too tired from being mad with the world and don't want to act upon injustices just yet, I can still feed on the hope that lingers on solidarity streets across the globe...