Yes, of course we need financial freedom, and gainful employment, and capitalism and opposing viewpoints, laws and culture and the ability to pursue an education and evolution and revolution all coupled with the freedom to choose our own thoughts, friends and actions. Although I don't suppose you can "couple" that many things... (digressing)
I'm not advocating a cult or communism or suggesting anything that is to insinuate that a utopia is attainable by love. Nor am I naive enough to believe that anything I propose is actually real or attainable on the universal level. Not when humans and their nature are involved. That post, although idealic, was merely my own musing about my own life to this point and what I know to have been missing from it pretty much so far.
I'm a pragmatic realist who sees romance in idealism and thinks we could all use a bit more of it in our lives.
As for where I am right now, I'm feeling a bit like Rapunzel stuck up in the tower wanting nothing more than to go home and trying to remind myself that to be happy there, I have to be happy here and all that other "power of present thinking" nonsense that I remind everyone of all the time. And it isn't nonsense...it just isn't always practical nor human and I find at the end of the day that I am excruciatingly and gloriously human, I'm afraid.
I came to this oil rich country on the Persian Gulf four months ago for many reasons. Adventure, escape, HEALING, time for ME, to work in a field that I love, to pay off debts, to save money, to travel this side of the world and to learn what all this Muslim/Middle East stuff was really all about. And for the first two and a half months it was pure adventurous bliss. I found that I fit right in and immensely enjoyed (and still enjoy) the wonderful team of people I have been able to work with. I did pretty good things. I broke some records in recruiting. I made impressions with people who thought recruiters were all liars and snake oil salesmen. I made peace with customers that had lost faith in our recruiting system. I promised them results and I delivered and then some. I gained their trust. And to anyone who knows me, THAT is everything as far as I am concerned. With trust, respect and love and interdependence and real idea sharing and mixing can occur.
Then, it all started to break down. Word of losing our contract started to spread and then rumor was revealed to be truth. The ministry stopped issuing visas. They told us it was because of Ramadan and the government was closed down during that time, which is true - but not why they stopped giving us visas. They had simply decided we were "out", so didn't see fit to give us visas anymore till they felt like it.
I started having to do a song and dance every day at the direction of my bosses for my candidates and my managers who were waiting on people to fill critical positions in their departments. Visas eventually loosened up. We were give the GREEN LIGHT for continuing to hire and that the contract award was in protest and could go on for months, even years. (Mind you, I was not naive enough to believe this...but I thought we had 6 months or more.) Then the ministry threw another residency requirement in to the mix that stalled mobilizations. We got through that and then were given a new directive by the USG requiring clearances never before required of new hires (and existing) before mobilization. So people, living breathing humans with lives and homes and families and medical needs and bills to pay continued to get pushed through new hoops and roadblocks. And god love 'em, they were frustrated as hell, but they did every single thing they were asked to do and we only lost the smallest handful to the extensive timeline. I would never have made it here myself in July if all these requirements had been in place. All these changes happened in a blink.
Now...as of mid last week, the final expiration date has been given to the contract. All protests are cleared and we are not a consideration of any sort. All bets are off. Everything the company has been telling my team to tell our candidates is null and void. (Even for us). We are the phase out and clean up crew now. The message and the mission has changed entirely. It is anarchy and every man/woman for themselves. And my bliss has turned into misery. Sickness at what I have put people through who have been trying to get a job here. People who believed ME, who bought into ME. Who trusted me to give them the scoop, the skinny, the status of where we are today with the changes. Some of them quit their jobs in their home country already and are just waiting on a plane ticket from us.
They will never get here. These people are not widgets. They are not products. They are human beings. Real live people. People from all over the world. People who want to come here from India and the Phillipines and Pakistan and Africa...to make a tiny fraction of what the Western employees make. And it is still much more than they could make at home. People who leave their families, their children, to make money to send home and only get to visit their families maybe every six months. I get to tell them this news starting Monday. Now the record number of people I hired will be the record number of people I tell there is no job for them.
They will be angry, sad, confused, frustrated, in despair...they will be in total disbelief. They will tell me how they have been holding on and counting on this for so long and NOW I tell them this news. Some will cry. Some will curse me. Some will say, "that's life on a contract". Many will tell me their stories of hardship and sickness in their family and how much they need this job. I just have to listen and try to help and try to reassure them and then probably come home at the end of the day every day feeling like a shitbag and have to figure out how to pick myself up and go in an do it again the next day. This will go on for weeks. WEEKS.
So, no, I am not an idealist. I am not even the queen of positivity you might think and I am most certainly not sitting around on my cloud of oblivion thinking happy thoughts about butterflies and rainbows.
But I do enjoy those images. I do believe in the beauty of simple things. I do believe that there is an awful lot of good in this world and in people everywhere. I do believe that to be happy there, you have to be happy here...at least in the most basic everyday sense. I know there are life altering things that happen everyday that can make here less enjoyable than there, and vice versa. I know that life can quite literally just suck sometimes.
I will go so far as to say, I don't believe in a heaven or hell - at least not in the biblical depiction. Heaven above. Hell below. Live for your death so you can be saved. No...thank you very much.
So, no, not an idealist. A realist who has lived the "realest" of life's darkness already. Born into it. Raised to a teenager in it. Saved myself from it by leaving home for college and never looking back. Some friends have romanticized it and likened the experience to the "Phoenix" rising from the ashes and there is a lot of truth to those ashes. And to my apparent inability to lay down and take defeat. (Oh crap, is it "lie" down or "lay" down? I can't remember.) They are kind. I am better because they are in my life.
But all that self salvation and perseverance leads to immense loneliness. And I have spent years filling that loneliness with the wrong person or people. For the sake of not being alone. Living to please others for love, instead of finding someone who loved me just because I am me and that I loved. (Being raised by wolves teaches this pattern, but it has also given me insight to see my mistakes and to learn from them, finally, and to insist on something better. And to know that if I don't find something/someone that can have this river love I waxed all dreamy about with, then I am cool being a loved one for my friends and family - a group that is growing worldwide, and can dig my own company. I am not lonely. I genuinely see the world glow and know this journey is mine and I really wouldn't change a thing because I like who I have become.
I haven't come this far or learned this much to throw it away or to give up. So you'll still see the idealism sneak in from time to time. I'm ok with that. Because idealism in the way that I am using it is just a wish, a prayer, a desire....maybe even a fantasy that gives the wisher hope.
This wisher has hope. This woman believes. This ME knows there is beauty in substance and deep conversation and passion and shared silences and experiences. I caught a glimpse of it recently. It was so awe inspiring, rare and such a departure from anything I have encountered that it reassured me it was definitely possible. It was damn near mystical because it was exactly my shade of love. If it did nothing else, it reignited a spark in my spirit and my heart that has been missing for so very long. And for that, I can only be grateful.
And so it goes...
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