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Entry Tow To: NemoFrom: Beyrouthawit Subject: The Fine Line Between Tigab and Self Examination Dear Nemo, Its Saturday night and what am I doing? Well let's say that I am not sitting in a trendy downtown bar with my laptop on my lap and a Metropolitan in one hand. Following the optimistic trend of thought that claims that the glass is half full, let me just say that I am creating the building blocks for my future. As I sit here typing for hours, trying to spit out fifty coherent pages by Monday for my "Entrepreneurial Management" class, I keep telling myself that all this has a purpose. I only wish someone would show me a glimpse of my reward. I just want a little reassurance that ten years from now I will not look back and think that whether I had spent thirty caffeinated hours in the computer lab or whether I had been watching the Usual Suspects for the twelfth time would not have made any difference to where I would eventually end up. Do you think that I am asking for too much? After all, I keep telling myself that my level of confusion is really quite adequate for someone my age and rank of sanity. At least I have some issues figured out such as my religion (Christian Orthodox-but don't ask me for details), my sex (female, and with a capital F-my short-lived feminism is not indicative of my femininity), and my age (even though it is only a number I wonder if my recurrent nightmares of my parents admitting that they had miscounted and I am actually 5 years older is of any significance). Lets just say that y'all have caught me at quite a bad stage-that annoying self-examinatory and absolutely void-of-utility stage where a question mark seems to hang over everything dead and alive. "Wey Tegab" my mom would say. According to her, back in her days, no one questioned anything. They lived and they said "temesgen". Now, I repeatedly tell her that I am not inflicted by any kind of luxury-syndrome and that I am not ungrateful, just a little doubtful. But she adamantly believes that having access to all material things that satisfy my whims has only made me expect more from every round, and in the long-run, has made me more at risk for being disappointed. However, my version of the story is that I will not be ungrateful and a "life lived without questioning is one not lived at all" as 007 would say (I had to use a James Bond line somewhere!) Nevertheless, my life abroad was not bad in any way, but I don't think that I ever had the reassurance of being in a cocoon of familiarity-of waking up everyday and knowing that even when I stepped outside of my house I would still be at home. Seriously, sometimes Emaye nearly succeeded in making me believe that if I had grown up in the homeland I would not be plagued by such perplexing crises. I would have probably gone to Lycee or Sandford, had my clique with whom I would eat lunch in a secluded corner of the playground and I would have had a very organized and transparent life. Not to say a good life. But I can only hypothesize because I never had the opportunity to experience this life. However, when I am back in Addis, I can sense that there is some kind of uneasiness underlying people's everyday lives. And I wonder whether they too would question the routine if they were pushed and made to contemplate certain issues. Or maybe this type of "chinket" is really reserved for those that have been deprived of the simple essence of everyday living because they have been spoiled by materialism and they have come to expect too much from each day. Nevertheless, Europe has fostered some of the greatest thinkers and philosophical movements of our century and just living in a continent burdened with such intellectual history forces one to internalize some of this truth-seeking behavior. However, I truly believe that Africa too has embraced some of the most poetic and tantalizing minds that are equal to or surpass the philosophers and laureates of the Western world. Unfortunately, they are not given the homage or recognition they deserve. And the people are not given the chance to appreciate and experience their teachings. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, alawqim,. I am neither a philosopher, nor a poet. Just another candidate in the rat race who is trying to alleviate her daily stress with abstract forms of reassurances. Berry.
To: Berry Berry,
Speaking of gender, one of the (many) advantages of being male in this world is, paradoxically, the whole "Ladies first" thing. Case in point, this correspondence: you come up with the interesting ideas, all I have to do is just improvise around what you say. So here goes my Chinket" by Berry
Embrace the question mark! This from a person who almost always has to respond to anything anyone says to with "Why?" or "But, not necessarily. How about..." But that's worked out pretty well for me I think. Let me explain. Based on my experiences, I firmly believe that the foundation of true friendship is disagreement. If I can argue with someone for hours and hours on the most arcane topic, and if at the point where all the other people around start getting annoyed, we are just getting warmed up, then I know I have found a buddy. I once argued for 3 hours about whether the choice of one word in a newspaper ad was correct (it wasn't even one of those fancy wordy intellectual sounding ads, just one of those little things in the corner, black and white, with a product on sale and a list of features - it would be too embarrassing to say what the actual word was). My opponent is now a lifelong friend. That the same thing applies with oneself. The truth is always there, waiting to be revealed. But it does not just show itself, you have to pull back the curtains, and most of the time, that means you need to pull on both sides in opposite directions. You have to be wracked with doubt, torn between self-love and self-hatred, and then you get to something interesting. You have to believe in something (to give meaning to life), but you can only believe what you have questioned.... I believe (and therefore I question). In other words, I agree with you and James Bond. So you're taking Entrepreneurial Management... That sounds like what I was referring to in my previous entry when I said "things nobody teaches you". I guess they do teach that! So help me, what do they say about truth, in that class? Is it the first casualty of business? Have we, in this entrepreneurial age, finally reached a world where we live with "truth and consequences"? There's a town called that: Truth and Consequences, Arizona (or maybe it was New Mexico). Because that's how they lived back in the Wild West, or in someone's romantic vision of it. Well, here we are in the Wild West phase of the digital economy, same mixture of romance and gritty reality. On the one hand, there's the whole spirit of adventure, breaking free of a stuffy old world, a new era where there's less privilege, more risk, a brave new world ruled by merit, hard work, daring, and most of all, luck. The entrepreneur can be like the straight-shooting cowboy of the movies. Or is it already the time of the crooks, where the game is for established forces to preserve their power by holding back the truth? Are techie entrepreneurs today true pioneers, or misfits greedily elbowing each other in a gold rush? Of course, I, like everyone, think I am one of the good guys. I guess you have to gamble that if you have something of value to offer, you can simply offer it and get your due. But you have to conceal some of your weaknesses in a negotiation, present some things you are about to develop as being already there... it's a slippery slope. So is this attempt to put a philosophical twist on my daily reality. But here's a more literal aspect of my daily routine, if I can call it that. I consider myself very lucky to be in New York City right now. The best part of it is that everything seems extraordinary. It usually starts with being squeezed with hundreds of people in a subway car, on the Number 1 train in Manhattan. I mean literally, somebody's-nose-in-your-armpit squeezed. A couple of hundred people per car, a dozen cars per train, one train every couple of minutes, dozens of lines, it boggles the mind. This past week, the threat of a subway workers strike was treated like an approaching hurricane (adults panicking, children thrilled at maybe not having to go to school). It would just be impossible to move 10 million people onto, off, or just across this small island in a normal way without the subway. The Mayor, the union, the governor are involved, everything as high-drama, suspense until well after midnight the night before the strike date. I had a crucial meeting all the way downtown the next morning, and then another midtown, would I make it? Everyday is full of such uncertainties, things not fully in my control, but that could make or break what I've been working on passionately for over two years. I get off the subway at 34th street, right near Madison Square Garden. The street is like a river of people, you can't take three steps in any direction without rubbing shoulders with someone, or stepping on their feet. Especially now that it is the shopping season, and right there across the street is the Mecca of shopping, Macy's. It's hard to describe Macy's, nothing ordinary about it, it's a monster, the Godzilla of department stores. But the first thing you see when you come out of the subway is not Macy's, it's the giant (advertising supported) millenium countdown clock. A couple of years ago, it was easy to dismiss as yet another instance of trivial commercialism. Now that it reads 12 days, and you see the seconds ticking down, every morning, no matter how rational I feel, I can't help but get a sense of something extraordinary... This countdown... I remember seeing it with over a thousand days on it, the 21st century a distant hypothetical future. It's right here! It makes you think of all the "by the year 2000" statements we heard growing up. I am reminded of a song call 'Africa 2000' by Roy Ayers and Fela Kuti. It was recorded in the 70s, and goes something like "By the time the year 2000 comes, we hope, no! We know! that black people will unite,// By the time the year 2000 comes, we know that Africa will be One ...." I remember hearing it just yesterday (it seems) and thinking, "Yes, of course! Why wait 'til 2000, we'll get there before that even!" Ah, the irony. Now that makes me feel old! In a way, the year 2000 is like an age equalizer. Because, suddenly, everyone over the age of 10, even if they aren't big Sci-Fi fans, will have some memory that makes them say "Oh, this or that was supposed to happen before the year 2000 but it didn't", so we'll all feel equally old. Y2K is the great "reset button" in the sky. It reminds me of Jubilee 2000, the campaign (inspired by the bible) to relieve the poorest nations of their debts on this occasion. Well, we will also be forgiving the burden of aging itself! So my point is: how lucky we are to live at a time when even the routine seems extraordinary! But it makes it harder to write a diary doesn't it... I sense that you are in a time of flux too, where you can't really look at anything as "daily routine", when you know your life will be completely different in a few months, and it's supposed to be up to you, but at the same time it feels like it isn't up to you.... I know the feeling, and it doesn't go away so easily, is all I can say. Next week, I'll actually be in Ethiopia. I can tell you already that your entries in this little exchange of ours will influence the way I think of my stay. I will be reading my email though, so I'll make sure I update you with a play-by-play (what is that groan I hear? Sounds like SELEDA editors' "yeah right!"). Before I leave you though, I just want to mention Zere Yaqob. I have this short and beautiful book, written by a 17th century Ethiopian by that name. I think you would find it most interesting... at the very least, it taught me that what we see as our traditions, and think of as immutable (usually when we consider them in contrast to some Western values we adopt by choice, force or chance) are not that fixed. Here was a religious guy, a monk, and one who had never been outside his country, so you'd expect him to be very conservative and unquestioning. Indeed, how much more fatalistic can you get than a guy who lived in silence, by himself for decades? Yet his thoughts, amazingly, are all about questioning and doubt. We generally think that our culture revolves entirely around family, the community, obligations, favors and holding together a tightly knit society. Anything that centers on "me" we think of as being more Western. Take death, for example. When someone dies, a Westerner might view it as "my loss", "I need closure", "privacy", "let me see my psychoanalyst" etc., while Ethiopians have a very public leqso, beating of chests, material donations that are recorded in a public book. It almost seems like the whole point is to reinforce the community more than to address the individual feelings directly. But Zere Yaqob is very much concerned about the self: what is my position in this world, how can I find the truth etc., explicitly self-centered questions that we would associate more with westerners. I found this book most re-assuring. Basically, "just being a self-centered, egotistical, spoiled brat does not make me any less Ethiopian than the next guy!" But seriously, whenever I wonder if doing this or that is being "too ferenj" and get that vague feeling of guilt at not being true to the roots, I think of Zere Yaqob, and I say to myself.... (I wish could drop a nice quote but I don't have the book here so...) I simply think of Zere Yaqob and say: hmmm.... What about me? Memememememe ME!!!! Nemo.
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