Well, in real life, there are no sound effects.
I learned this by way of having a conversation with a little Colombian girl named Yiselis.
This came on the evening of my last day as a short-term staff member at Proyecto Libertad, a missionary base located on Isla Tierrabomba off the coast of Colombia. I had just spent five weeks doing hard, hard work and hanging out with the locals, and I was sitting on the front porch of the base, looking out into the bay. The sun had just gone down, and I could begin to see stars coming out. The bay in front of the mission is big enough and lonely enough at night to be really good for people who like to stare into the expanse and wonder about their lives. Being such a person, I frequently spent extended periods of time doing this at night. It was my last night at the mission, so I was really into it at this point.She came up by the porch and sat down and we talked for a moment. We quickly came to discuss the fact that I'd be leaving in the morning. She asked me if I was excited to return home. I told her I wasn't.
I told her I wasn't, but there wasn't any genuine sadness in my saying it. I was trying to manufacture the feeling because I thought that it was what I was supposed to feel. I was sitting on the porch about to leave a place I love, about to leave a bunch of people to whom I had become connected, and I couldn't muster an ounce of emotion.
Instead of sadness, my mind was occupied with a strange and steady contentment. I knew that my time at the mission, for the moment, had come and gone - and though I had no sense for what was to come next, other than that it was to take place in Minnesota, I knew it was right and that I needed to know no more about it.
But I told her I wasn't. She responded: Por que no?
Little kids are awesome. They have no sense of consideration or propriety in conversation. If you say something to a child and it doesn't make sense to her, it will be questioned or rejected, forcing you to examine it. You don't want to go home? Oh, that's stupid. Why not?
Porque me gusta estar en la isla.
I like to be on the island. Again, my response to her question was rejected: pero Dios te necesita en tu propio pais.
"But God needs you in your own country."
God needs me in my own country. ...aaaaaaaaaaand flashback!
At that point I flashed back a little over three years, without any cinematic flashback sound effects, to a moment in my life I will never, ever, ever forget.
I was sitting on top of the roof of an orphanage in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, right next to the border it shares with El Paso, Texas.
If you are close enough to the border, you can sit on top of the roof and see something striking. Juarez is a poor, poor, crime-ravaged border town. El Paso is not. In Juarez, there are not many lights. Sitting on the roof of the orphanage, you can see the sparseness of the lights in Juarez, and then you can clearly see the border - immediately on the other side of it is the rich, developed land, teeming with lights and with people that are about a thousand times more well-off than the people on the Juarez side. It'll make you think, not that some of us ever need any prompting to enter the world of maddening introspection...
I was sitting on the roof, and my good friend and former roommate Drew was sitting next to me.
Drew is a missionary. It's just who he is, and anyone who knows him could tell you that. I am not. I have a lot of experience with mission work, but I am not the same thing this guy is.
So we were sitting on the roof, staring into this beautiful and unsettling juxtaposition. This was right at the end of our short experience at the orphanage, and I was (surprise!) working on manufacturing some emotion, as it seemed appropriate. I was trying to really want to be a lifelong missionary like some of the people I saw around me. It seemed like what I was supposed to do, to get really inspired and selfless and devote my life to the service of others.
So Drew and I talked for a few minutes, staring at the border and all its lights. Eventually, I stopped trying to feel the way I was supposed to feel, and I just sat there and stared. Wasn't thinking about a thing in the whole world. At that point, Drew asked me, with his gaze still fixed on the lights of El Paso:
Isn't it so much better on this side?
Somehow, in that moment, I resisted the urge to say what I thought I was supposed to say (and the greater urge to respond in a way that connected with what my friend was feeling), and I responded without thinking about it for even a second:
"I don't know. I think they need me over there."
I'll never forget it. It just came out of me.
And I meant it. I honestly believe, despite the number of international experiences I've had, how well I've functioned in them, and what they have meant for other people, that there is some reason I'm supposed to be where I am.
I couldn't begin to tell you what it might be. I don't get the sense that I do much here. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence young people, but I don't hardly even do that anymore. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence people in connection with my church, but I've recoiled so hard from the effects of my time being a "really good Christian" that I don't know when I'll ever do anything like that again. I don't do much of anything significant here.
Come to think of it, apart from physical evidence of my presence in other countries in the form of medical centers, latrines, homes or cement floors, I don't get the sense that I've done much in any of the "theres" either.
But somehow I still believe that I am (for the moment) where I need to be. The answer I gave to Drew's question was incredibly honest. It just came out without my mind devoting any attention to it.
I couldn't begin to tell you why, but I believe it.
