just think about it
We had a guest author at school this week, Jan Reynolds. A former National Geographic photographer, she showed an hour's worth of slides of indigenous cultures from every continent. "Anything I have done, you can do," she began her presentation, "anything you want to do, you can do." In the dark, it was hard to gauge the kids' reactions; my own was tears, and I was grateful for the darkness. Lately, I've been feeling like I haven't done so much of what I could've done. I remind myself it's never too late to be what you might have been, as the images changed from the Himalayas to the Sahara to the Amazon basin.
After the slides, she said it again: Anything you want to do, you can. I relay this to my 9-year-old Turkish student. "How?" she wanted to know. What is the path from being a political refugee, living on cash assistance while your professional parents are barely able to get service jobs, to climbing the Himalayas , crossing the Sahara on a camel, visiting the Amazon rainforest? Our American students are raised with the assumption that they can "just do it." Does it require affluence and disposable income? Or just the freedom to dream that comes with knowing where next week's meals are coming from?
"Just think about it," Reynolds urged her young audience. The cultures she photographed for her book series, just 12 years ago, don't exist in that same form now, due to globalization--just think about it. The Ethiopian women ask the men to marry them and the men take their wives' names--just think about it. A half-degree temperature increase changed grasslands into the Sahara--just think about what a few degrees of global warming might do to our planet.
Just think about it--what if this slogan were as ubiquitous as the other? What if instead of doing it--consuming, wasting, producing, exploiting--we just thought about it? Thought about the impact of our cars' need for non-renewable fuels. Thought about what's the same about our various religions, instead of different. Thought about the difference between naming the world's highest mountain "Mother Goddess of the Earth" instead of after the first white man with enough colonial clout to get the European maps changed.
Anything you want to do, you can do. Just think about it.
After the slides, she said it again: Anything you want to do, you can. I relay this to my 9-year-old Turkish student. "How?" she wanted to know. What is the path from being a political refugee, living on cash assistance while your professional parents are barely able to get service jobs, to climbing the Himalayas , crossing the Sahara on a camel, visiting the Amazon rainforest? Our American students are raised with the assumption that they can "just do it." Does it require affluence and disposable income? Or just the freedom to dream that comes with knowing where next week's meals are coming from?
"Just think about it," Reynolds urged her young audience. The cultures she photographed for her book series, just 12 years ago, don't exist in that same form now, due to globalization--just think about it. The Ethiopian women ask the men to marry them and the men take their wives' names--just think about it. A half-degree temperature increase changed grasslands into the Sahara--just think about what a few degrees of global warming might do to our planet.
Just think about it--what if this slogan were as ubiquitous as the other? What if instead of doing it--consuming, wasting, producing, exploiting--we just thought about it? Thought about the impact of our cars' need for non-renewable fuels. Thought about what's the same about our various religions, instead of different. Thought about the difference between naming the world's highest mountain "Mother Goddess of the Earth" instead of after the first white man with enough colonial clout to get the European maps changed.
Anything you want to do, you can do. Just think about it.
posted by Slyvia at
5:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home