Musing from Mexico

I am amazed by my own capacity to relish in community.

I consider myself to be an independent and logical person, and yet…

I am living in a country that is not my own, speaking a language that is not my own, but I still feel that I am a part of something. And I love that feeling.

Tonight, a neighbor who I've never met and has no logical reason to want to build a relationship with this weirdly tall, short-haired gringa across the street spends 20 minutes in my driveway today saying hello and offering her help as we try to communicate with smiles and wild gestures of excitement, pleasure, and embarrassment.

That is something.

She works in a hospital with heart attack victims, and is the mother of a two-year old who took 13 years to conceive. She wanted four children, but cherishes her one. How do I know that? Why should I know that?

That is really something.

I am in Mexico hearing in the news from the United States about human rights being given and taken that are not my own, and yet I am still moved.

I am not gay, yet the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide affects me emotionally. I am not black, yet the Charleston massacre affects me viscerally. I am not religious, yet Obama's rendition of Amazing Grace in Clementa Pinckney's eulogy gets my adrenaline pumping.

I consider myself to be a logical, not an emotional, person, and yet…

And yet…

I think I'm just going to end with a cliché quote, one that sums up tonight's musings nicely:

"Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee."

- John Donne

And can we add the inverse?

"Any human's triumph exhilarates me,

Because I am involved in human kind,

And therefore never send to know for whom for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee."

- Ericka Foreman