What a week, ladies and gentlemen. What. A. Week. It began with me shutting myself up in my room all last weekend so I could focus on writing an essay on ritual shrine slavery in Ghana (upbeat, right?), followed up by attending the premier of a new film on human trafficking on Tuesday, followed on Wednesday by quite possibly the most frightening lecture EVER about climate change. By this point I was suffering from what I can only term as 'human rights overload.' Obviously, I knew when I decided to study human rights that a lot of it would be upsetting and obviously, the reason I decided to do it anyway was/is because I firmly believe that something needs to be done about these upsetting things. And usually, I can handle it; I can manage to take in the disturbing facts and statistics and practices without getting overwhelmed to the point of non-functionality. But after being inundated with horrific stories of trafficking and slavery and then being told that we're all basically going to be underwater in 50 years unless our carbon footprints are virtually eradicated, I passed overdrive and went into a sort of human rights coma. I skipped my Wednesday seminar, came home, and took a nice long nap. Then I got up, drank what could only have been the equivalent of an entire bottle of wine, and went back to sleep. I had high hopes for myself on Thursday and even set my alarm to wake me up in time for class. HA. I got up and realized I just didn't feel the need to show up for lecture- I needed a little more time in denial. So I lazed about and did nothing all morning and made myself generally useless to the world for a while, and then I pulled it together and went to my afternoon seminar and made myself resume functioning as a contributing member of society.
I have found that this is what I do- what I need to do- every so often. Sometimes something will happen, or several somethings will happen, or I'll come up against something that's bigger than my ability to process it, and I'll just shut down for a little while. I'll avoid human contact and I'll shut myself in my room and I'll sleep and sleep and sleep. I used to feel guilty about these intermittent hibernations- like I was somehow avoiding things, being unhealthy, taking the easy way out. But then I realized that it was my way of processing things... when my conscious mind can't handle something, it takes a break for a while so that my subconscious can deal with it. Then after a little while, I suck it up and deal with it on a conscious level, in whatever way it needs to be dealt with. This time around, that meant that I started being super-anal about recycling and sustainability and transportation (yes I know that my flight to the US for Christmas is going to basically use up my carbon allowance for the entire year, but I cycle everywhere to try to make up for it!), and that I went back and finished the book on trafficking that I'd had to take a break from when I was in my pseudo-coma. Because I know that sometimes I need to take a break from the human rights world I've chosen to immerse myself in, but I also know that I can't stay comatose forever... as Kasey Chambers says in 'Ignorance': "You can turn off the TV, and go about your day, but just cause you don't see it, it don't mean it's gone away."
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