This world is very big, and I am very small. This has pretty much been my mantra since I started graduate school about a month and a half ago. I think at least partially by design of the program, as an entering Masters of Social Work student, I have been inundated with bad. I have learned so much about histories of pain and injustice and brokenness; I have learned so much about how those histories of pain and injustice and brokenness continue to perpetuate into today. Essentially, I feel like I have spent the last month and a half being taught why social work needs to exist: somebody has to fix all of it, right? With each passing day, my mantra has become more and more true. Every day the world feels just a little bit bigger, and I feel just a little bit smaller. There is so much in this world that I wish to help change, and I am me: a 21-year-old kid who may or may not feel like a good day consists of getting up, going to class, making sure the right paper gets turned into the right class, going to bed and hitting replay in the morning. Point being, graduate school feels big, and if graduate school feels big, then how am I supposed to help to change a world that is oh so much bigger? This world is very big. I am very small. But there's another piece that I haven't said yet. My complete mantra is this: this world is very big, I am very small, and that's okay. Why is that okay? Because I am 21 years old and I don't need to be the one to change the world, at least not right now. So, I've clung to my mantra, I've said it out loud almost every day, if my friends hear me say it again, I'm pretty sure one of them will probably punch me in the face. I've said it so much that it has started to lose its meaning for me, and it's driving those around me nuts. Regardless, it's done its job, and I've made it through a month and a half of graduate school. It did its job until yesterday. Until events that happened halfway across the world yesterday flipped my mantra on its head. Now, I think that what I should have been saying all this time is, my world is very small and I am very small.
And so, at the risk of being the 2 billionth person on the Internet, who really has no stake in it whatsoever, to talk about Paris, I am going to talk about Paris. The worlds of people in Paris were rocked yesterday. I would imagine that every notion of safety and security they had was long gone when several people entered the city with guns and intention to kill. And they make good on those intentions, they did kill, they took the lives of hundreds of people, and in doing so have changed the lives of thousands if not millions of others. My heart breaks for these people. Not unlike how I feel when I learn about histories of injustice in school, I feel a sense of sorrow and need to help. I don't think that I am alone in this feeling of needing to help. With the ability to help comes the ability to at least in part take control of an uncontrolled and unexplainable situation. And if I'm being honest, I truly believe that pictures that say Pray for Paris come out of this overwhelming desire to help. The fact of the matter though is that I don't know that these things are actually helping.
My world was not rocked yesterday. I got up, went to class, made sure the right papers were turned into the right classes, and I went to bed with the expectation that today would be just like yesterday. It was a good day. No one I love died yesterday. My sense of safety wasn't shattered yesterday. No matter how much my heart breaks for the people in Paris, my world and my life did not change yesterday. I am not faced with the seemingly impossible task of having to move on. As much as my heart breaks, and I wish that it hadn't happened, I also recognize that it isn't about me. Why? Because while this world is big, my world is very, very small.
My little world is not perfect. It has been rocked several times. I know what it's like to feel suffocated by the weight of my world crashing on me. I know what it's like to feel out of control. I also know that in these times it has been hard for me to watch the world move on when it was all I could to to sit in one spot and breathe. I share this because I think it's why I'm having such a hard time seeing the words Pray for Paris trending on social media, and with the fact that there is now an option on Facebook to turn your profile picture into the flag of France. If I change my profile picture it shows my friends that I care, for two seconds I get to feel like I'm doing something to help, like I have the tiniest bit of control because I am showing solidarity. But I don't think I'm actually helping the ones who need it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there is anything bad with the pictures and the posts. It just drives me crazy, absolutely crazy, that I can't do anything more than that to help. I think the same is true in respect to school. Yes, learning about histories of pain and injustice and brokenness make me feel small, but that is because my world, my small world, has not truly been touched by these things. My sitting in a classroom for three hours at a time learning about how many more people of color are incarcerated in this country than people of Caucasian descent does not change anything. If I were to go and post a picture that said Black Lives Matter in response to these conversations in class, the reality is I am not really helping at all. By posting a picture I am not really helping at all because I can't. These things are so much bigger and so much more complicated than I will ever be able to fully understand, than anyone will ever be able to fully understand. It's impossible because it is so much bigger than individual people.
Okay! It was not my intention to get all dark and depressing, but I think it may have happened. My intention was to say the events of yesterday changed the way that my brain is working just a little bit. This world is big, and I am small. Yes. That is true. It is also true though that my world is small and I and I am small. And I cannot and should not expect to change the whole big world in one fell swoop because that would require me to get bigger than my little world. That, my friends, is impossible. As my life goes on, my little world will get bigger, and the number of things that I will be able to truly influence will grow as my world does. Right now though, my world is pretty small. it consists of school, school, school, the occasional human contact, and more school. As annoying as it might be at times that is my world right now, and I can only directly affect the things and the people in it. I believe that that is true for all of us. So, take two seconds to post a pretty picture of the Eiffel Tower if you want to, but take two more seconds to do something that directly affects someone in your own little world. Hug someone you love. Go puddle jumping with friends because you can. Force a friend to stop studying and have coffee with you. Change your world first.
Paris is public. It's everywhere, we couldn't escape it if we wanted to, but it's also important to realize that these things happen all over the world every day and gain far less publicity. They're not even on our radar. And yet it happens. Realizing that I think probably makes us feel even smaller. And I think that's okay. We were not designed to change the world by ourselves. Rather, I think that we were all intentionally placed into our own little worlds so that we could change those. It's not our job to fix the big world. It is our job to touch our little worlds. Post about Paris if you need to (I obviously did), but go jump in a puddle too.
This world is big, but my world is small and so am I. And I think that's pretty great.
