2 months down in Thailand!

As we have struggled with ways to get involved as volunteers here in Chiang Mai, this has not been the most active time of my life. The many places we've contacted just aren't used to working with volunteers with our schedules and/or don't need any volunteers. So, as I've been thinking (which I've had a lot of time to do) I realize how depressing life is when lived without purpose and meaning. We are designed to work, play, love, and create. When we aren't able to do those things, we lose hope and knowledge of why we exist.
I have gained a much greater empathy for the people who stay at the Timothy House, leaving day after day and searching in vain for a job. The sense of rejection and discouragement they feel must be so great, as they depend on others continually to meet their basic needs. Many cannot stand the despair and they give up. You can see it in their eyes, their slumped gait, and hear it in their tired voices. I see how easily I too might give up if I were in their shoes.
When we are young, our purpose is dictated for us. We are usually students, following a course set by the older and wiser. Many of us then choose vocational training in some form, be it college, apprenticing, trade school, etc. Then we find a job, buy a house, have a family. At least, that's how much of life in America seems to go. Not so here. The majority of people work to eat, and often that's in the form of growing food. They exchange crops with their friends and neighbors. They sell produce at the market to get money to meet their other needs. Their "work" is much more directly related to meeting their basic needs. The work they do has purpose. And in the midst of that, they are relating. They know their neighbors; in fact they depend on them.
Here, for many people, there is the problem of not enough. Not enough money, not enough food, not enough choices for the course of their lives.
In the U.S., many people have the problem of too much. Too much food (check out obesity rates in the U.S. compared to elsewhere). Too much money. Too many choices. We can get jobs doing anything we want, as long as we have the resources to get the degrees and certifications necessary. And it doesn't matter if our jobs improve the quality of life in any way. Our jobs don't need to increase the amount of love, trust, beauty, or faith, they just need to give us a paycheck and make us feel "successful." We don't have time to even notice our neighbors, much less know them. We depend on no one but ourselves. We create nothing, and collapse at the end of the day not certain if we did anything more than write emails and read reports and attend meetings.
I pray that I will always seek to find meaning and purpose in my life. Specifically, purpose that is beyond getting a paycheck. Real purpose. Creating things of beauty. Promoting peace. Caring for creation in the form of people and nature.
This is not what I set out to experience when I left home, but perhaps it will be a worthwhile lesson.
- Blessings, Catherine