Of Heroes and Heroism

There has been a lot of talk of late about ‘heroes’. It has been a like a whirlwind occurring around me, and changes in weather always make you reconsider if what you are wearing is sufficient and suitable for what will follow.

For the longest time, I have held three truths to be true.

Firstly, there are many around me whose work with migrant and refugees I admire tremendously – they inspire and encourage me. They have taken cases to court for labour disputes, defended refugees for immigration offenses, given of their time and money to help the marginalised, remained steadfast through difficulties, made personal sacrifices, and done their best through challenging circumstances. Most of their work is done without public display; it is done because their hearts are moved by those who suffer. They see needs and they respond. They try their best to overcome their fears; they learn as quickly as they can as they move through uncharted territory. Their work, I believe, triumphs any day over mine.

Secondly, when we see suffering, it is incumbent upon us to do what we can. The truth is that most of us who work with migrants and refugees can walk away at any time, but the migrants and refugees themselves can’t walk away from their own lives. We can put them aside from our minds, create distance, and get back to our own concerns. But if the reasons for their vulnerability do not change; if the underlying causes of their suffering remain unaddressed, then others will go through what they have suffered unnecessarily. We know that we have limited resources, limited knowledge, and limited influence. This is not an excuse; it is a challenge we need to overcome. It will take time, patience, courage, and tenacity. We have two choices – to walk away, or to do whatever we can. We each choose our own way, one step at a time.

Thirdly, for change to happen, all of us need to do an ordinary little bit. The word “hero” is grandiose, and relegates achievements to a ‘chosen’ few with ’special powers’ – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Achilles, Hector, Spiderman. What this world really needs is more ordinary people doing ordinary things, at the right time and with the right heart – saying a word of encouragement, giving a hug, volunteering time and resources, bringing integrity to work, loving friends and family more excellently… these are what makes a real difference. And the true heroes are those who do these consistently, with sacrifice and without recognition.

All of us are heroes; and all of us are surrounded by heroes.

This is the beauty of life, and it is in the ordinary.

Diary of a Sociology Student: Finding Your Way

In my last blog post, a reflection on postgraduate life, I expressed surprise at the pain involved in intellectual work. It is indeed difficult, arduous, and uncertain. I found it hard to accept this truth, because I had been seeing the act of reading and writing as liberating – as mental escapes from the demanding pace of activism. I was wrong. Intellectual work is hard work (particularly as a neo-classical sociologist in an age of technology after the cultural and linguistic turn).

There is a ’switch’ that is required for any activist – any person, really – in resuming postgraduate research. This is particularly acute for ‘mature’ students working on Phd theses. If we aren’t aware of this, we spend a lot of time feeling lost, lonely and inept. To understand the need for this ’switch’, we need to examine the nature of the main tasks a postgraduate student undertakes so that we know how to find our way.

Firstly, postgraduate students study. This is where they begin on their journey as seekers of knowledge, and this is a task that has no end. Studying is an act of reaching for the infinite. You can keep on studying and there will always be more books to read, more debates to hear, more ideas to digest, and more arguments to examine. Studying is not as constrained as actions in the ‘real world’; they are not as limited by time, people, decisions and rules of appropriate behaviour. You can always keep reading; you can always keep restructuring your work.

Secondly, postgraduate students work with ideas. These are not just the ideas of their contemporaries or of the teachers they have met face-to-face – they deal with ideas from the past, from people they don’t know, places they have never been, and translated from languages they don’t understand. There are some limits to the circulation of ideas (the state for example, may ban books, or teachers may tell you that certain ideas are a waste of time) but postgraduate students, particularly the resourceful ones, are able to transgress these limits.

Postgraduate life, therefore, often feels like free-falling in slow motion. It feels like diving in a deep ocean without a reef wall by your side or the sandy bed below you. You know you are going downwards, but you don’t know how fast and how long the journey will take. You lose a sense of perspective. You can’t measure your depth, height, or physical orientation. You panic, looking for signs of the sunlit surface where you once were. You glance around desperately for your (hopefully more experienced) ‘buddy’, wanting to be reassured and guided back to normalcy.

It is in these times that we are most vulnerable. We are anxious and uncertain of ourselves, wondering if we know anything at all. Our confidence crashes when we receive criticism. Our faith in our selves vanish. The slightest intellectual criticism makes us feel like idiots. Some of us cling to our supervisors, hoping for answers. Some of us cling to theorists, hoping for inspiration. We follow paths set down by these authorities, rather than trusting our own instincts; we surrender to their advice, trusting their intellectual judgments, not our own. Some of us just escape – most of us momentarily, through fantasy, fiction, or continued procrastination, but some of us forever, giving up on our Phds altogether.

How do we find our way?

First, I believe that all of us have our own ’secret questions’. In order to navigate ourselves out of confusion, we need to find out (or rediscover) what these ’secret questions’ are. I call them ’secret’ because they often lurk in our subconscious, just below our awareness. We may once have been able to articulate them specifically, but they are now hidden to us – forgotten, buried, or discarded as our work evolved.

In order to find these secret questions, we need to search our hearts, minds and souls. We may have to bring ourselves back to the first time we took a step in the direction of our postgraduate research. We may have to sift through our memories to remember what problems troubled us, what theories quickened our hearts, what findings blew our minds. This personal excavation is necessary because many of us have forgotten the original reasons why we embarked on this long journey; why we chose this particular topic for research. Many of us have been side-tracked along the way – sometimes by (well-meaning) supervisors and colleagues who told us to follow other paths rather than the ones we set out initially. These ’secret questions’ become the invisible ropes that guide our research; they produce a restlessness in us that keeps us drawn to particular themes. Swerving away from them, or cutting them out of our work, makes us lose our motivation.

Secondly, we need to recognise that research, by definition, is exploratory. Some of us may have the supernatural ability to predict all possible outcomes, but most of us are likely to stumble and fall. We will take wrong turns, which we need to correct; we will face stumbling blocks, which we need to overcome. We will walk down alleys only to find dead-ends; we will try new paths that lead nowhere. There will be visas we can’t get, supervisors we can’t win over, and difficulties in getting good data. This is a fact in postgraduate life. Therefore, we need to build in extra time and resources for our work – to give ourselves time for being lost. We need to learn how to manage our anxiety and to pace ourselves. We need to learn how to bounce back from setbacks and develop realistic perspectives. We need to learn how to wait and how to relax. We need to let ourselves be ordinary human beings exploring new territory rather than expecting ourselves to be seasoned superheroes.

Thirdly, we need to listen to our own instincts and, with humility, keep an open mind. It is arrogant to think we are right all the time, and that we know everything there is to know. Rather than getting flummoxed by unexpected data, we need to make sure that our mental frameworks are flexible so that we can incorporate new information. We can only produce meaningful research if we are intellectually humble and willing to learn from anyone. This is particularly important for social scientists who work with marginalised, disempowered, or vulnerable people. If we discount their views, if we don’t take time to listen, we only reinscribe existing power-relations uncritically.

As time goes on, as we continue to read and learn, we realise that the terrain becomes more familiar. We start to see major landmarks; we begin to recognise themes and patterns. We start separating ‘normal’ facts from extraordinary ones. We learn skills in interpretation – in recognising significance and meaning. It often takes substantial ‘investment’ before we see payoffs in understanding.

A member of my faculty once told me that it isn’t intelligence or brilliance that is crucial for completing a Phd – it is sheer doggedness and hard work. We will face challenges, we will get confused, we will lose our way. But we also find inspiration; and on good days, we run lithe and smooth, like athletes.

If we persevere, we will find our way.

Diary of a Sociology Student: Why does everything seem so hard?

Returning to postgraduate studies has been difficult. I have been on leave from my thesis for about a year and a half. As I try to think and write with academic rigour, I feel like I am trying to wade through molasses. Why am I not running lithe and smooth, like an athlete? Why do I struggle so hard with words, fiddling clumsily with ill-fitting concepts? What can’t I just remember what I read, for goodness sake?

It is such a change of pace, locking myself away in order to focus on my studies. I miss action. I miss meeting migrants and refugees. I miss attending meetings and learning from fellow activists. I miss the sense of community we have developed through our shared passions. It is a dual change of pace – a deliberate quietening of my body, forcing it to stay still, and a purposeful revving up of my mind, forcing it to read, think, and process information quickly.

Returning to studying is harder than it seems, because I think (automatically) that I am older and wiser than I was when I last put my pen away. I find in fact, that I am unable to do what I did before and need time to develop analytical competences again. I am ashamed of this; I feel like I have regressed in my abilities rather than strengthening them along the way.

Returning is also harder because I have been considered a civil society ‘expert’ on migration in the time that I have been away – being a student again is humbling. At yet, you cannot learn if you think you know everything. The more you read and write, the more aware you are of your ignorance. This is the greatest irony in scholarship.

As I remember some of the ‘great scholars’ I have met over the past few years, I realise that they have some characteristics in common. First of all, they are curious. They are interested in many topics, they ask lots of questions, and they pay attention when people speak. They also demonstrate intellectual humility. They tell you how hard it was for them to write their books and papers (now well regarded); they tell you of the mistakes they made in their analysis. The older ones, nearing retirement, are surprisingly patient and generous. They answer the straightforward questions of a novice without arrogance. They encourage young students to take up the mantle of scholarship. They have a sense of legacy.

Being a student again is difficult. We make it easier for ourselves when we accept this fact. We need to allow ourselves time and space to ‘grow’ into our roles as scholars again. We need to redevelop our intellectual capacities, practice our information processing skills, and read up on current literature, rapidly proliferating. This takes time. We need to give ourselves a chance to catch up.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Thirst
Mary Oliver

Being Ordinary

We live in a world that exalts performance. We reward the best, the fastest, the smartest, the most talented. We give prizes for the first, second and third places. Any competitor knows that anything below these is meaningless, worthy only of a token of ‘consolation’. We admire those who make it to the top. So, we too, clamber upwards, trying to be the best so that we are admired.

Most of us are not the best in our everyday lives. We are ordinary most of the time. We live with what we have, finishing each day, each cycle, one at a time. We often see ourselves beside others who are quicker, sharper, wittier. It makes us feel dumpy and slow. We think to ourselves – ‘I could never do what she does’. ‘If only I had the gifts he has’. ‘She is so much more than I’.

These comparisons are odious; they make us feel smaller. So, we put away our tools, before we make laughable mistakes. We keep our hands down, before volunteering for something we may do badly. We keep our wings away, thinking we are not worthy of flight. We stay in safe territory, scratching away in small spaces with our eyes cast down.

And we do worse. We mock at those who are weak. We focus on their mistakes, wiggling away at their faults. We criticize, looking for errors, laughing at stupidity. And when those on top fall, we take secret delight. We are fascinated when they turn to alcoholism, lose all their money, have marital problems, or become fat. We are secretly relieved because their failures make them ordinary… as ordinary as us.

We need to break out of this way of thinking. We need to remember that society is built upon errors and lessons. We don’t see this, because we only mark paths of success – we forget the dead ends and closed doors faced by those who found their way eventually. Society is also about ordinary people in ordinary lives- some becoming more vulnerable as they are caught in power games. We can try our best to make things better, or we can just sit in the seat of scoffers, watching from a comfortable distance.

If we choose to act, we have to accept that we will not be the best at what we do most of the time. There are always quicker minds, stronger bodies, and hands more talented around us. Others can write better, talk faster, and look sharper. This does not negate the necessity of our action. The needs in the world are often greater that the efforts made to meet them. And those at the coalface are often desperate for support and company.

Our ordinary lives can make a difference. The keys to this are grace and dependence on God.

We need to be gracious to ourselves, accepting our own weaknesses. If we fall, we need to pick ourselves up, and put our shoulders to the plough once again. We need to let ourselves fail, so that we allow ourselves to stretch our wings. When we do so, we remember that we have strengths, unique positions of influence, and special abilities that no one else has. No one can replicate what we can do in society.

We need to be gracious to others. We need to be kind to those weaker than ourselves, encouraging them along their way. It does not help if we preen ourselves, showing off our best features. We can help if we are patient and humble; if we show others our mistakes so that they learn from them and exceed our achievements. When our competitors and adversaries fall, it may mean extending a helping hand, shutting up, and giving them space to recover.

We may see nothing of ourselves, but God sees us differently.

Moses, when he was called said, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

The Lord replied: “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

Gideon, when he was called said, “But Lord, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”

The LORD answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”

The truth is that Moses and Gideon were ordinary.
The truth is that we are ordinary.
But with grace and guidance from God, there is great power in the ordinary.

Facing Uncertainty

There are lessons about our relationship with God that we need to learn repeatedly. It seems that God throws us different problems just to see if we have learnt our lessons well. Do we really trust Him? Does He really care what happens to us? Can we really depend on him, even if we cannot see His hand moving? Through real problems, real moments of panic – when it seems we stand tottering right at the edge – He tests us to reveal what we really believe deep inside.

Learning these types of lessons – of trust, submission, and humility before God – goes beyond comprehension; we can’t just read, listen and understand with our minds. We need to internalise and practice these truths. We need to have them go deeper in our spirits. We need to incorporate them in our habits, make them part of our attitudes, have them inform our reactions to what we encounter every day. We need to live out these truths.

There are always contrary voices we need to resist in order for God’s truths to take root in us. We will be confronted with these messages – from the world, from well-meaning friends, from the uncertainty in our own hearts. We have to choose to cling on to God’s words with faith.

Although we may feel turmoil, confusion, and lack direction in our lives, God has a deeper plan for us. We may not be aware of it, but He sees everything – our struggles, our pain, our rebellious nature, our efforts to conquer ourselves. He has not forgotten us. He beckons us to rise again. His touch is gentle – so soft, we hardly feel it. When we let Him minister to us, He wipes away our tears.

The walk of a Christian is not easy, but the alternative is harder. The crosses we take up, though heavy, are lighter that the burdens we bore before. As we transform to become slaves of Christ, we find strangely that we gain freedom. We are freed from our harshest task master – our discontented self with our unsatisfied desires. We are freed from the fear that comes from the dominion of others; we no longer need to please men to progress in life.

I am heartened by this prayer of Thomas Merton’s:

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

(Thoughts in Solitude)

Editing Ourselves

We present edited versions of ourselves to the world.

We edit ourselves in many ways – when we choose our clothes; arrange the expressions on our faces; pick the words we use. We edit ourselves based on what we think is acceptable. We consider our imaginary audience and say what fits. We present ourselves in particular ways.

There is a downside to editing ourselves. We stay quiet in the face of injustice; cower instead of standing on principle. We ride with the tide of public opinion, nodding on the outside while feeling disturbed on the inside. We do this, because we know pay a price when we say something controversial or different.

So thin-skinned people avoid speaking up, because the price of criticism is greater the more sensitive you are. You get afraid of getting rammed on the head with a caustic remark. You don’t want to be lonely clown under a harsh spotlight, facing a jeering crowd. You stay quiet; do nothing, taking comfort in invisibility. You count the cost of public attention and convince yourself it isn’t worth it.

There is, however, a positive side to editing ourselves. Anything spoken with tact, humility and respect goes much farther in influencing others. Our choice of words can affect deeply whether the truth of we speak is accepted or considered. We learn self control when we bite our tongues; develop character when we face criticisms patiently. We learn perseverance when we continue to fight regardless of opposition.

Self-editing can be very hard. I can’t count the number of times I have had to stop myself from clicking ‘send’ after typing a sarcastic response to an email. My defiant nature and tendency to grumble makes self-editing a difficult job.

Editing ourselves is tiring. It makes us seek friends with whom we don’t have to be somebody, where we can be less conscious of saying the right things, doing the right things – where we can be less guarded. We take comfort in friends who accept us, who love us regardless, warts and all.

It makes us seek solitude – the space of quietness and reflection where we can recharge and re-centre; where we can figure out the why and how of engaging in the world. We need this so we can re-emerge with strength and focus.

We make choices when we edit ourselves. As we mature, we get better at deciding what to edit out and what to leave in. We learn when to respond and when to stay silent. We make mistakes along the way; our lives are imperfect. We need to learn and move on.

In Defense of Dreaming

When I was child, I was often rebuked for dreaming.

People would chastise me frequently, sighing at my absent-mindedness. They called me Alice in Wonderland and seemed to feel it was their moral duty to bring me back to reality. Dreaming was a waste a time, they said. It was unproductive. I should be studying instead – reading textbooks, memorizing facts, finishing homework. Putting my nose to the grind. Working hard.

The undesirability of dreaming was reinforced through parables we were told in school. Ali, a boy my age, spends all his time up on a tree. He dreams of all the money he could make – of getting richer doing this activity or that. Lost in his imagination, the sun rises and sets. Days go by; he does not work. When he breaks out of his reverie eventually, he realizes that valuable time has passed. He missed opportunities. He grows old and poor, dependent on family members, a deadweight on society.

As I grew older, I continued to struggle with these messages that decried dreaming and praised the productive use of time. For a long time as an adult, I found myself constantly trying to do something useful, to be helpful, to make myself valuable. I filled my time with this activity or that, in an endless quest to be ‘productive’. I felt uncomfortable sitting with ‘nothing to do’. I found it hard (and still do) to read storybooks, paint, play music – do anything just for fun, without purpose or end. These were other forms of dreaming, of wasting time escaping into different worlds only I inhabited.

The mistake that adults made when they chastised me for dreaming, was that they assumed that nothing was going on in my mind. In fact, the opposite was true. My mind was leaping from thought to thought, playing with ideas, making connections, comparing events. I was wondering about people, asking questions, role-playing responses, imagining reactions. Reality was boring; sitting in classrooms dull. So I escaped on improbable journeys, wandering with my mind as my body stayed locked at home and at school.

Dreaming is an important part of being.

It is through dreaming that we make connections that help us understand who we are – we more than workers, machines, or cogs in a wheel. We don’t just live and die, imprisoned in space and time. We exist in more than three dimensions – we can soar in our spirits, reach out to an invisible God, draw strength from what cannot be seen.

It is through dreaming that we free our minds. We can question ourselves, our realities, our assumptions. We can examine, in private, the truthfulness and integrity of our actions and words. We can connect to people we have never met – crossing boundaries physically insurmountable. We can learn lessons left behind by others, drawing on their experiences to supplement and inform our own. We can float in creativity – imagining recipes, composing songs, painting images, writing stories.

It is through dreaming that we develop visions of the future we want, the societies we desire to build. We follow in the footsteps of a multitude of others – Eleanor Roosevelt, William Wilberforce, Mohammad Gandhi, Martin Luther King – who dreamed of what could be, long before they witnessed these achievements. Their visions carried them through years of disappointment, difficulty and toil.

Society becomes impoverished when we cease to dream. Dreaming helps us to understand ourselves in the world, frees us from the captivity of the present, and opens up our imagination so we can see alternative futures.

Let us dream… and let us leave dreaming children in peace.

Integrity

Job 25-29:25 is part of today’s reading for Holy Trinity Brompton’s One Year Bible Initiative.

I am struck by Job’s response to Bildad, when he says, “I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.” (Job 27:5-6).

Children in Protest(s)

The Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has announced that the Education Ministry is planning a nation-wide protest against Israel’s actions in Gaza, involving about 5 million children and 360,765 teachers from more than 10,000 schools (NST, 9 January 2009). The NST reports this to be a Cabinet decision, passed on Wednesday. “Asked on the danger of exposing children to such atrocities, the minister said:

“When they grow up, they will have to face global issue like peace, environment and the economic crisis.”

This is ironic, considering how civil society groups, such as JERIT, have been vilified by the Malaysian government for involving children in their demonstrations.

Our Secret Lives

I have been following the One Year Bible readings along with Holy Trinity Brompton Church. The readings for each day are accessible online, and as a church, they go through these passages together. Every day, some of them post their thoughts on the readings and they continue in daily dialogue. The pastors of HTB do this along with them. This sort of ‘group reading’ is enlightening because you can see how God is speaking to them, and through them to others, even as they puzzle over passages.

The verses that struck me today were Matthew 6: 3-6:

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

There is something beautiful about doing secret things with God. There is intimacy, sharing, honesty, that goes deep into your being. It is an ideal offering. This is for You, Lord, and no other. Please accept these humble gifts. The delight that He feels as He responds to you is yours alone. I am pleased with you.