¿Who Are You?

Who are you? Are you what you’ve done? What you do? Are you your dreams? Drawing on five years of bartending and watching countless first dates from the inconspicuous sanctuary that is “behind the bar”…I can tell you that each time two people are getting to know each other the following are covered:

o   What you’ve done.

o   What you do.

o   What you want to do.

To an American, much of what makes a person a desirable friend, mate, network opportunity or new hire has everything to do with doing.  Places you’ve worked, cool-ass trips you’ve taken, bomb concerts you’ve attended, what you studied in school, your current job and what your intentions are for your future. We like drive and plans. The worst insult you could call us is “lazy”.  Professional doing, personal doing, academic doing. If you’re not doing, you’re not improving. And if you’re not improving, you’re stagnant. And if you’re stagnant, you’re a failure.

I’m comfortable with meeting people in my culture because I know how to act and react to the dance of questions that comes with meeting someone new. I can pleasantly and engagingly answer the interview questions that one poses and genuinely reciprocate with well-timed and thoughtful follow-up questions. Conversations are bartender’s greatest work of art (and working Freshman Orientations also helped).   

Cut scene to a tranquil, lush mountainside community of humble Dominicans. In places with little opportunity, doing isn’t who you are. It can’t be.

The members of my community can’t talk about what they studied in school because most have a 5^th grade education. They can’t talk about the cool show they were at last weekend because tickets cost about how much they make in a week.  They don’t talk about what they do for a living because they work washing clothes, or driving a bus, or selling lottery tickets.
The first questions I’m asked are if I’m married and if I have kids. Upon meeting the hundredth woman my age who’s married with three kids… I often awkwardly blurt out some unintelligible question dealing with her bean cooking preferences. Followed up with the equally awkward weather talk. Literally how do you talk about weather in a place where it is ALWAYS THE SAME?!

I’m discovering how to meet people without talking about doing. Here you are less of what you do and more what they call your forma de ser or “way of being”. You are how much you give to others, who your family is and how much you pass by to say hello. You are also how many times you bathe a day, the clothes you wear and how good your beans are (women only). Many Dominicans live extremely relaxed lives in which no one ever really has anywhere they need to be at any specific time, they aren’t trying to conquistar that promotion or get one kid to clarinet practice and the other to soccer at the same time on Thursday evening. As such, their extremely extroverted selves are always such a relaxed and loving joy to be around. Perhaps this is why they don’t allow themselves to get stressed out….because it would negatively affect their forma de ser and then they would be a social pariah. Kind of me right now. JUST KIDDING. Am I? Could go either way.

Adding to my social pariah-ship is the fact that in spaces of “poverty” like this, 100% of your forma de ser is around 100% of their forma de ser 100% of the time. They see you struggling to learn how to wash your own underwear by hand in the backyard. They notice when you’ve gone to the bathroom 8 times a day for the last 3 days. They see you before bed hunched over, awkwardly trying to brush your teeth while juggling a flashlight and toothbrush in one hand and a water bottle in the other. They see you in a towel enter and exit the outdoor “shower” and notice how sweaty you get when they make soup for lunch on an 88° day.* 

You can’t present the best side of yourself because everyone sees everything: hiding the bad things and presenting the good parts doesn’t exist here.  It’s scary because they find out quickly how (who?) you really are.

So then this is the question: Who are you minus all the doing? I’m still figuring it out. It’s been interesting meeting people via only their formas de ser. Maybe it makes me insecure. I am so comfortable as myself in American culture but I don’t yet know how to construct my “Dominican self”. 

How can someone know me without knowing everything I’ve done? How can I know someone without knowing everything they’ve done?

I’ve seen parts of these people that most Americans reserve for only their most intimate friends…but it’s different, and sometimes I feel like I’m living around strangers who will never understand me, and sometimes I feel like these people have seen more sides of me than many of my people in the States.

*All random examples that have definitely not happened to me.

Millennial Development Goals

About the name…

The Millennium Development Goals are a list of eight goals dreamed up by the U.N. in the year 2000 to be completed by 2015.

I first learned about them in Professor Moeller’s International Education class my sophomore year. She presented this list of inspiring, unifying, future-driven goals. Then, in few words, she told us how they were all bull shit. I remember leaving the class upset with how negative my university education was (I later learned that this is what they call “critical thinking”).

These lofty goals were made in a room filled with representatives from 1^st world countries (former colonizers). They were made to “develop” the 3^rd world (previously colonized countries), without the consult of the 3^rd world.

Development is, as I understand it currently, the point of the Peace Corps (more on this over the next 2+ years?) Side note: what even IS development? I like to think that Peace Corps is of the grass-roots, bottom-up, inclusive pedagogy. Vamos a ver.

Millennials are the greatest generation. Don’t just take it from me! People write books about us, yo. We just want to change the world and make it better. We’re idealistic and believe in individual uniqueness and the power of diversity. This is reflected in how we think about building inclusive work settings, friend groups, and our rejection of colorblindness. We are constantly working towards bettering, whether it be our environment, our politics, our social systems, ourselves or our communities. We are volunteers and activists and apparently we tend towards irreligion. They call us the “Peter Pan Generation” because we stay in our youth longer by waiting for marriage and kids. We were raised by Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers and reacted to their teachings.

The Baby Boomers (1946-1964) were famous for a distrust of government. They expected that things would change with time, but still were active in social change, especially surrounding the Vietnam War. Oppositely, this generation is also the wealthy, white, men that are currently in power (don’t worry—not for much longer!) They believed in conservatism and were famous cynics and maintainers of the status-quo.

The Gen X-ers (1960-1979) are a small generation because the birth control pill was introduced in the years leading up to 1960. They were born when society was less focused on rearing kids, and more focused on adult development. They are known as the “latch-key” generation because there was reduced adult supervision due to an increased divorce rate, an increase in maternal workforce and lagging childcare options. Gen X-ers are famous for being slackers, cynical and for being the “unfocused 20-somethings”. Think of the hit TV show “Friends”: self-involved, fun, aimless. 

Us millennials reacted to the teaching of our parents. We took some things, rebelled against others and created the best generation to date. Here are some conversations I have with my fellow millennials make me excited for the future:

• ·         A young man I went to high school with wants to open his own innovative furniture business.  The dream is to bring it back to his community so that he can teach kids who normally might not even finish high school a sustainable trade.
• ·         A boss-lady and dear college friend of mine got into the field of college success for low-income college kids because she struggled throughout college making ends meet, dealing with debt, the financial aid office and transferring between schools.
• ·         My sister wants to go into the field of international human rights via NGO work because she thinks that violations of human rights are worth dedicating your professional life to.
• ·         An inspiring young man and good college friend got into making music. Not just because he’s ridiculously talented, but to open a dialogue about diverse realities in the U.S., and to celebrate being black and brown.
• ·         A young woman and dear college friend decided that two years of her “prime” were best spent in a rural town in Uganda working alongside local agriculture workers and learning the language Runyankole-rukiga, so she joined Peace Corps.
• ·         Literally every human in my 17-01 cohort here in Peace Corps Dominican Republic. One of the most inspiring group of genuine people who expand my mind, nourish my soul, call me on my shit and push me to be the best possible human being I can be. Shout out to #famsquad!

Millennials get a lot of hate from old people. Probably because we challenge the status-quo and because we don’t like the world that they left us. The future is female (©, probably.) It’s black and brown and powerful. It’s inclusive and collaborative and respects the environment. It’s activist and changing. And it started when millennials began taking positions of power.

So I call this blog “Millennial Development Goals” because I work in “development”. But also because Millennials are so obsessed with constantly improving themselves and their world. I’m interested to see over the course of my life how my beautiful, sparkly generation decides to take on “development”. SHINE ON, MY 20-SOMETHINGS, SHINE ON!

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Here’s a cool quote about being an optimist (because for some reason people assume that optimists are ignorant or stupid):

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage and kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
--Howard Zinn