Brandi confronting tough questions

What happens if all you ever have known has been questioned and you feel like there is no real answer to anything anymore? What if you always want to be positive and see the good in everything but sometimes it just becomes too much? Does that make you weak? Does it make you different because sometimes you can’t be happy constantly? If the weight of everything just becomes so real and you realize the world isn’t always a happy place- should you cry? Should you show your weakness or do you keep your head held high because that is all you have ever known? Do you push these feelings away because you know you can escape to your little home in a ‘good’ part of town- or do you realize that maybe nothing has ever been as it seems but you have just been to blinded by ignorance and ‘everything is perfect’ to see it? Do you question everything, or do you let some things be? Do you stand up for your opinion or do you let others have their right to think what they want to think? Even if you know something is right, do you let it be known even if it’s not right in their eyes?

When you see people in need, do you drop everything for them or do you take care of yourself first? Is comfort something real or is something made up that we feel internally at different levels? Does being uncomfortable really make us grow or does it limit us in that moment to looking at things based on our comfort? Where do we stop? When do we stop believing everything we hear and question assumptions? Do we question assumptions so much that the original point gets lost? Or do we let things be based on our own judgments?

This afternoon I took a bus to Nyanga to help out with the Africa Unite after-school program. I think I learned more about the world from today then I have any other day since being here. I hung out with the kids and played games with them outside. I spoke with two different nineteen-year-old guys who basically run this program for 60-100 kids on a daily basis. It just, it just shocked me about how much I don’t know about life in general. Hanging out with these kids, some with special needs, some without, just makes me realize how precious it all is. From this trip we are always told to question assumptions. And I get that. And it’s important. But what happens if we start questioning so much that we start to loose the importance of what was originally asked? What if we become so wrapped up in the ending that we loose the process and what got us to where we are? I am scared to come home and get wrapped up back into the fast pace of life. I am scared to loose the feeling of the importance of the small things, like realizing that other people are going through just as much as me and maybe just maybe I need to take a step back. I am scared to get back into the life of ‘everything is great- lets just get through the next week” because seriously- that’s a week you will never get back.