Yet another introspective rambling, but I have few friends here.

July 30th, 2009

Dates kind of evade me now, as I sort of live by the day. But some interesting things, to say the least, have happened in the past few days. Interviews have been going relatively well, I still have my freak-out moments of WTF am I exactly doing and am I doing enough and holy crap is this ever going to materialize into a thesis, but I mean, I figure this is all part of the process. I better get a grip of myself when I get back to school, otherwise I would be rather insufferable. Don’t worry, working on it. New goal in life: write a thesis while still being chipper. I refuse to let my undergraduate thesis turn me into a train-wreck. Now if this is my PhD disseration…


I always thought the moment of violence was the rare moment of clarity. To kill or not to kill, regardless of all the motivations one may consider in retrospect, is an absolute decision—you can’t half ass it or compromise with the situation. Morally, maiming a person with the initial intention of killing him is as reprehensible as killing someone. You either agree with it or you don’t.


More and more I am realizing, perhaps this is not the clarity of the violent moment, but simply a reflection of the way I think—as much as I like to talk and think about the gray area of life, I feel like I am a quite straightforward person. I go for it or I don’t. To me the split second decision to commit is a decision nonetheless, and I have very little patience for people who oscillate visibly or retract their decision. Retracting it does not undo the decision; you are simply making another one—shouldn’t one just own up to the first (mistaken) decision, and take responsibility of it? (Maybe that’s why I used to firmly believe in the moment of clarity that comes with violence—you can’t hurt a person and be like, whoops, my bad, I take that back. It doesn’t come with a return policy, like that exorbitantly expensive BCBG dress or unnecessary extra spatula. You do it or you don’t.)



Violence, here at least, seems to leave behind a trail of complicated emotions—no moment of clarity here. What is always the most difficult to come into terms with is when normally ‘good’ emotions or results are intermingled with the ‘bad’ ones. For example, forgiveness out of indignation. Peace through restraint. Or, reconstructing one’s life as vengeance.



“Survivors have to succeed. Do you know why? Because the best revenge to the person who tried to kill you is to be more successful than them, and then help them. Being in a position to help your killer, that is the best revenge a survivor can do.”



I’m still baffled when I hear things like this. What do you say to that? Good luck, keep it up? Glad you are channeling your anger to something constructive? Hope you get your revenge? I am left speechless and clueless. You know, when I tell people that I am studying about Rwanda, many are quick to ask: “so I guess they are not all about forgiving and moving on?” or “I guess they haven’t really gotten over it yet, right?” I want to introduce Paul (the author of the aforementioned quote) to all of them. How do you ‘get over’ the death of one’s parents, loved ones? The metaphor of a wound is insufficient here—wounds heal, and often without a trace, so it’s hard to figure out where that childhood boo boo was and how much it used to hurt. But regardless of how much time had passed, people who died will still be dead, and till a certain point, people who are alive will still be alive alone. You don’t ‘get over’ such events, you simply transform it into something else. Like how you can transform vengeance into success. A new chapter in life, but not without reference to the one before that.



Researching in Rwanda, I feel like I have more (too many) opportunities to think about what the death of my own father has meant to me in my life. It was something that was part of my reality for a long time, the girl without a dad, but it wasn’t something I thought of consciously that much. I rarely mentioned the fact that my dad died when I was young to my friends, even just a few years ago, not necessarily because it was too painful or I was somehow ashamed of it, but because I just didn’t really feel the need to. What’s the point if all it’s going to do is kill the dinner table mood? Besides, it was a long time ago, I had ‘gotten over’ it. But my encounter with Rwanda has made me more vocal about my life as well. I don’t ask for sympathy, I had a pretty good life that wound me up at Harvard, and other wonderful places in the world, so I don’t feel like I am some damsel in distress of a tragedy. It is just I think, a realization, listening to people who lost everything in a short 100 days, that we don’t really get ‘over’ it, un-touched and un-scathed, but we simply get ‘through’ it, transforming what we are and what we do to fit the shape of the wound. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.



Research, someone once told me, is ultimately about oneself. I think that is the most accurate thing I have heard. Despite our alleged objective distance, understanding others often end up being more of understanding oneself. So forgive me if this blog turns into an internal dialogue – pretty much every time. ☺