Note: I mentioned these pictures a long time ago, but I never got around to posting them - sorry! Click here to check out some shots from my final month in Immokalee. Also - this post will be the final post of this blog - thank you all for caring enough to check it, for your emails, comments, and interest. I appreciate the encouragement that you've shown, and I hope that one day I can thank you properly.
Last month, while I was at home during my brief stay in Pennsylvania, my mom and I were making a long drive and listening to one of my favorite radio shows. A lot of things were going on in the program, but the information relevant to this post is that a big part of the story focused on a group of four young Iraqi men (all about my age) who held weekly phone conversations with a young American man.
The story was analyzing the friendship that these men shared despite their differences, and it compared and contrasted their similar interests through radically different surroundings. Towards the end of the piece, the young Iraqi that is closest with the American is put into a coma after he is a random victim of a public bombing. As they talk about what this means for all of them, they highlight that he will pass his 24th birthday in a coma, his pregnant wife unsure if their child will ever meet his or her father. They also mention that his birthday is May 29th - meaning that he and I were born on the exact same day.
Not that I didn't find this story interesting already, but in that moment that they mentioned the birthday, I found tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. The same revelation that sideswiped me in the car that day is the same reason that Immokalee has been so important to me. I'll do my best to describe what I mean by that, but forgive if my words come up short.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I know that I spend far too much of my time forgetting that there are people occupying these bodies that surround me. We're all the stars of our own movies, and even though you can pound it into my head that we're really all the same, that each person, despite the space they occupy, isn't really that different from me (or any other person), sometimes it takes a coincidental birthday to ring that bell for me.
Last night, I was in a crowded movie theater, and I had the same sensation. Sometimes, every thing in life just feels like a giant set, and all those people milling around are the bit-players. Man buying popcorn - played by: himself. Child throwing tantrum in bathroom: himself. Teenagers texting and nervously ignoring each other: themselves. High school football players fundraising with M&Ms: themselves. And these are the people I come into contact with! What about all of those other, unseen parts of my life?! South America, China, the entire West Coast, Europe, Australia, basically everywhere but here? Props. Nothing more than pictures on a website, words on the news. I have no connection that makes these places, or the people filling them, anything more than a blip on the credit-reel.
In one way, Immokalee changed that for me. I'll never be able to experience every culture, every language, every level of income on this planet - but it was huge, huge, huge to experience just one set other than my own. Within my first months of moving to Immokalee, I had one experience that will stay with me forever. I was biking home from work, passing a dog that was lying down and panting on the sidewalk, and for some reason, the big picture just clicked together in that instant. I realized that I came to Immokalee by a series of fortuitous, unusual, and somewhat difficult decisions, but that I had also just made the best choice of my life. I realized that I'd opened a door that could never be closed, and that no matter what happened to me, for the rest of my life, no one could ever take this away from me.
What was that? I guess it was the realization that there's more than just me. And I know I still forget it every day, and I forgot it every day when I lived there, too. But for the first time, I also knew it, and in some ways, I can never truly forget it again. I became polarized on a lot of topics that I was dispassionate about before, but that isn't really the point of this post. The truth is, I connected to a culture and way of life that was radically different than my own, and that experience has heavily adjusted the way that I see this continent and the entire world. In a way, that single connection outside of my "normal" was also a limitless, ever-multiplying connection to everything that's ever not been normal to me.
If you would have said the word "enlightenment" to me three years ago, I would have pictured this little wooden Buddha-figure that I own, and probably some candles or incense. Say it to me now, and I see an exhausted dog sprawled out on the pavement, tongue fully out, lifting his head just enough to decide whether or not I'm worth getting up for.
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