Saturday, July 30, 2005

Done

Well, today was my last day of work at the bakery, and it was kind of bittersweet. As much as I look forward to going back to school and getting into that, I felt like I really poured out a lot of time and energy into something that seems so nameless. All of the cooks at these restaurants and guys who clean and take out the trash. They are just nameless bodies working tirelessly, and easily replaceable. It is very humbling to know that within a week, most people won't remember my name. It seems that we aspire to such grand achievements and legacies that when our work is measured in delivery efficiency that is recquisite merely by a driver's license and baseline competence, we, I am certainly brought down to Earth. But even then, I do have confidence that my five weeks at the bakery was helpful to the others around me. I found myself comparing my summer to other possibilities of mission work or foreign trips and I found that I believe so much emphasis, especially within the Christian culture, is based on changing lives forever. Perhaps I am just going through that overly cynical period of questioning but I do feel so much stronger that my hard work and respect for the Honduran immigrants with me had an impact. Let me not even say that...no impact. Because not everything we do has to "impact" others for our own personal success. The help of others has become more self-glorification than ever before. I enjoyed being sincere with them. Being a co-worker who didn't call them spics or call them gay. I could care less whether they go to church tomorrow morning or not. That is not the point, and the more that it becomes the point, the more ridiculous this entire walk is. I don't know...that certainly was a tangent. But, in the end, I definitely feel blessed to have done what I did. I wish that more people would have that experience.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

sometimes, as you say, one has to make one's impact on a different level then the obvious

meanwhile, when do you go back to school?