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On Practice 1

A lot of people in my life are leaving. It’s not that I don’t understand why they are choosing to leave. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I have traveled the world to find answers, so of course I understand. But the thing is, I disagree.

I don’t have a problem understanding A, who has bought a one-way ticket to Spain to learn organic gardening. When I was jobless after Brown, I thought about learning to grow my own vegetables in Japan. But when people asked me: for whom? I had to face the fact that I couldn’t eat all that stuff on my own. And moreover, that people have more important problems to solve right now, like confronting racism and fighting displacement. I found people who want to learn how to grow vegetables out of an apartment in NYC, and that was much more interesting in the final analysis.

I don’t have a problem understanding B, who thinks she can build a movement over email, pin down exploitative bosses on the internet, and investigate community problems by looking up books on amazon.com. I used to think that smattering my 200 page thesis with words like “panopticon” and “The Other” was going to challenge people. But when I turned off my computer and came out of my room, nobody knew what I was talking about. More importantly, nobody cared.

I don’t have a problem understanding C either, who has worked humbly and without complaint throughout his life to find a good job and stay close to his parents who are getting lonely in their old age. His parents also escaped what they thought were boring lives where they came from, only to find that even though America has different problems, you still have to deal with it. He thinks that by leaving, he will become a different person, a happier person. I became a different person. But then I realized that being different just isolates you, and then you stop growing and you die. Either that or you live a double life, splitting your heart between two places, until your heart gets very tired and thin. It’s very painful.

I don’t have any trouble understanding why you would leave. I just think that when you get to where you’re going, see everything with clear eyes. Test your original idea. And if it is wrong, find the truth and stop making excuses.
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