Libre Manifesto

America seems like such a far and distant place, physically and ideologically. Those giant houses, prim lawns, oceans of cars, the clothes, the excess, such excess. Where does it end? When is it enough? Here people live on an iota of what we sustain ourselves on in the US. Yet they are incredibly happier than we are. We have so many things to a point where it’s a burden. It seems wealth equates proportionately to worry; each unit of wealth accumulated generates an equal unit of worry. The more things you have the more you worry about preserving them. One expends a lot of mental and emotional energy to worry so much! Of things, their preservation, to what avail? It’s an enormously tiring burden, these material things and their puppet strings.

The things I worried over, the many sleepless nights, the frustrations, all seem, in hindsight, asinine and self-inflicted. At that time and place they seemed so important, as life and death, even though the truth was far from it. I admired America for everything it espouses; I bought it hook and line. Anything was possible and still is if you are willing to make the sacrifices. Any door can be opened. And I too bought into the excess, holding firmly to the belief that money buys happiness, that the end justifies the mean.

Many factors contribute to the decisions we make; a long journey of forgotten childhoods, confused adolescence, and adult awareness. We are the sum of those parts, no matter our denial, each shaped and pushed us to our present state. Perhaps it was humble beginnings, a desire to make my parents proud; show my family their hard work and efforts to provide everything for their children were not wasted, or to be financially secure enough to care for those who took care of me unconditionally. Whichever the reason, somewhere along the way I glimpsed the world of finance with naïve eyes and saw the answer to my dilemma.

My first job during my freshman year was as an assistant to a stock broker at a small investment bank. For a timid, quiet kid, unsure of himself or this new world of college, it was surprising and rewarding to pass a job interview and be told I was a good salesman. Perplexed at how that was possibly true, I accepted and six months later I knew I wanted to be an investment banker. This is a highly coveted position, along with management consulting, for students coming out of undergrad and MBA programs, especially at ivy leagues. Mainly because there is no job that compares in first year pay, reputation, connections, and exponential rise in pay grade. I remember the thousands of strategies we employed to get hired. It was difficult coming from a small unknown school competing against ivy leagues, which are generally the picking grounds for banks. There was also nepotism. Looking back makes me laugh at some of the things we did for these jobs.

In the end, it all worked out well, after 3 years of hard work, I landed 4 offers in the worst economic downturn in decades: 3 from reputable, large firms and 1 from a small Canadian firm in Boston. It would have been financially and practically a wise decision to take any of the first 3. But I chose the one in Boston…for a girl. The heart wants what it wants, and surely I regretted this decision a year later when the firm fell apart and laid off 30% of its US workforce.

Through all this, I never lost touch with the roots my parents planted of community service: love all serve all, they taught us. I volunteered on weekends and remained active in community service organizations in my spare time. While my conscience pulled in the direction of doing good, my mind was caught up in the American dream of wealth and financial security. Nowhere else in the world do people worry about money like we do in the US, our society breeds this worry, perhaps due to our massive credit culture. Like the massive project loans the government (and subsequent financial institutions) use to leash developing nations, many are chained by credit to corporate America. The problem with borrowing from the devil is your soul’s the collateral. After all this, after the rat race, half-way across the world in a village in Northern Malawi, after a string of unexpected events and decisions, sitting here writing my thoughts by candle light, I wonder is it worth it?

Life is a journey and I am thankful, grateful, for the people, places, and series of events that led to this point. Here, now, in Malawi I am receiving an education greater, tangible, and more valuable than any before. Unexpected, but welcome. I have also been blessed with the gift of books, as the previous volunteer left behind a treasure trove of literature. I can’t help pore over them. Granted the house and yard are a mess and in need of much work and cleaning, I really do appreciate the books: my coping mechanism. And so far these books have been enlightening and soul-reigniting.

Far from what seems a poisonous culture, far from the clutches of the modern world, my mind seems to have found rest. My eyes are still adjusting, closed for so long that the world still appears upside down, priorities all out of order, jaded by a society passing through an era of unprecedented capitalism. I’m still scrubbing off those ideals, but the dirt has been accumulating for so long that it is only natural that some will remain, permanently stained. Only natural that I continue to harbor the idea of wealth like a child idolizes a hero. The world has been crying to deaf ears for so long, suffering to blind eyes, that I feel shame. Shame for the dirt that covers me, shame that no matter how much I scrub I will never truly be rid of it. Intelligence dictates: what could I have done? I was young. My life was drifting in the winds of fate, pushed by the hands of parents that had nothing but wanted everything for their children. Yet my conscience is in disarray. It is not enough. We inherit the sins of our fathers, no matter our denial, and those sins are insurmountable. Crimson stains our hands, all of ours, we all played a part, and we would notice if only we stepped in the light.

Abandoning the comfort sterile life, to allow the intoxicating sedated numbness to wear off enough to open our eyes is difficult. It is much more sensible and simpler to dwell in an artificial world of our own creation, with our own problems, shutting our senses to the suffering outside. Just look around: our sparkling streets, never ending aisles in grocery stores, our automobiles, and hunger for more. People say, and I increasingly believed, that poverty is in that other faraway world. What can one person do to change such a monumental problem? My insignificant actions will alleviate no suffering, so I will pray for the world and live my life with the blinds closed. But I wonder how we can do nothing?

Politicians plot their grand strategies on checkered maps; pawns move and flags are planted in a perpetual game with rules. We, unlike them, are not constrained to a board with rules, our hands are not tied, we have no carrot dangling from a stick. Yet, we are seemingly unaware of our greater freedom to do something, to do anything. Free to open our eyes, listen to the cries, let the voice of reality blow away the cobwebs in our souls. John Keats wrote “do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?” If not for the sake of the world, then for the benefit of the soul.

I am sitting here with thoughts pouring out of my head on to this dimly-lit paper. I am no exception to my arguments, if anything this is a personal manifesto to my soul which seems to have been dormant for so long that I’m not sure if it still works. I find myself plagued by the same concern that troubled Andy Stitzer: “is it true that if you don’t use it, you lost it?”