L-E-A-R-N-I-N-G Overload...

I feel like a robot in one of those cartoons that is beeping uncontrollably and showing a bright red digital message on my chest blinking "Input overload..."  "Not responding..."  "Error..."

In the past week I have learned the following:

• Compassion, philosophically, is way different from pity and empathy.  That if we truly feel compassion toward someone it is because we believe that something seriously bad and undeserved has befallen them and we are similar enough (ie: we're human beings) that we don't ever want to imagine being in that situation but due to our humanness we realize we could be in that very same situation. According to Martha Nussbaum, our rational judgments lead us to the emotion of compassion which should then motivate us to act... so why doesn't it always?  How can we see a documentary of child sex workers in the redlight district in India, have compassion, and then not DO anything?
• The US CIA has commonly used torture, epecially in the war on terror and much of it was okayed by President Bush and his legal advisors... and we're not just talking Guantanamo Bay. 
• In 2003 a German citizen of Middle Eastern dissent with a similar name to one of the 9/11 hijackers was arrested, detained by CIA officials in a secret prison in Afiganistan for over 150 days, and tortured even after his passport and identity was proven... the head of the CIA's AlQueda Unit suspected he was involved in something - after all, with a name like that he had to be involved in terrorism somehow... (his name in case you wanna look it up: Khaled el-Masri)
• Torture is as prevelant today as when the UN Convention Against Torture was adopted in 1984.
• You are twice as dangerous to yourself as any person you might meet
• "If you're going to do something worthwile, it usually takes a while to do it" - Guest Speaker from Amnesty International
• Rev. Desmond Tutu spends several hours a day in quiet reflective time and prayer with God - His daughter speaking at the Law School
• Rev. Tutu's wife runs the show at home... "She's the one who would pick him up after a particularly tough day, dust him off, and say now get back out there and do your job!"
• Rosie Ruiz won the 1980 Boston Marathon by slipping away from the pack and riding the subway for part of the race, her prize was withdrawn
• In the 1920's eugenicists held health contests at state fairs and awarded prizes to the "fittest families."
• Growing numbers of parents try to have their high school students diagnosed with learning disabilities so that they can be allowed extra time on the SAT
• More than 10% of college freshman today have used paid conselors to prepare and get into college
• In the early 1900s 29 states in the US adopted laws of forced sterilization of mental patients and prisoners - more than 60,000 "genetically deficient" Americans were sterilized!
• In Singapore in the 1980s the government was encouraging educated young women to marry and procreate by sending them on free singles cruises and by offering courtship classes at the universities... meanwhile they were offering $4,000 down payments on apartments in exchange for steriliztion to women without high school diplomas!

Whew... that's not to mention all the thinking about wedding colors etc. (I will be a maid of honor for my best friend in May), my internship (the newsletter has to be published this week), and my volunteers in Bolivia (they are dealing with some difficult local politics right now)!
Oh, not to mention my job and my students.  Their final is on Thrusday and grades are due on Friday. 

You know how the little Garmin GPS lady says "Recalculating...recalculating... recalculating..." when you mix up the directions or take a different turn than what she had laid out for your path? 
Well, I feel like that's what my brain has been doing all this week... recalculating.  You see I feel like in many ways I had tried to map out my life.  Not just what I would do today or tomorrow, or ten years from now, but my thoughts and my opinions.  Now, I in no way mean to imply that I thought I had it all figured out, simply that I had found a bulldozed path, purchased some boots and a flashlight and thought that I would just trudge my way through with all the rest of my current talents and tools.  What I failed to put into play was all the other paths... not the ones I've already gone down and turned around on, not the ones I passed up along the way... no, no; the paths that I have yet to stumble upon... the paths that can be made if I go buy a shovel and chose to do the heavy labor involved in uncovering and clearing them. 
Right now I'm digging.  And it's hard.  I'm discovering new information, new ways of thinking about things, new attitudes and world views, as well as uncovering some old fossils that I've never seen before or given much thought to. Sometimes I'm tired of struggling and working so hard.  Sometimes I just want to give up and go back to the path that was already cut out... it seems so much easier. But sometimes it's fun and energizing to see what I'll uncover next.  Sometimes I find myself hollering to my friend, "Hey, did you see this? That sure is something!"  And once in a while I happen upon an earthworm or roly poly riggling along in the dirt and it dawns on me that my struggle could be SO much more difficult.
SO, even though it's frustrating when the GPS lady won't stop shouting (or so it seems) "recalculating" in her annoying digitized voice... we tolerate it because we know that eventually, no matter how many wrong turns we take or how much we confuse her directions, she will eventually get us there.  She knows our destination and won't give up (or shut up) until we have reached it successfully. 
I never thought I would compare God to GPS, but there you go... haha!

hmmm... journeys, time, paths... now it's just time for a tv episode and some chocolate! Kate