the day-to-day is inconsequential

I have had a hapless, sort of awful day. It started off alright. I went for a run. Ate breakfast. Wrote a bit. Then I went downstairs to wait at the bus stop outside my apartment building. Just then, nextbus.com, via my trusty phone, told me that the bus was behind schedule and would not be arriving for another fifteen minutes. So I decided to run (I literally ran) five blocks down to another bus stop, but half a block away from that bus stop, the bus drives by, two minutes ahead of schedule. A moment later, my backpack, which, unbeknownst to me, had slowly been unzipping itself as I had been running--spills all itscontents out.

Long story short, after a continued game of attempting to chase down different buses that would get me to the Edible Schoolyard (ESY), where I volunteer, I ended up walking all the way across Berkeley to get there. Along the way, all I wanted to do was give up (lame, I know, and even lamer for me to phrase it so), go to Philz Coffee for a mint mojito iced coffee, grab a brioche from Cheeseboard Bakery and be done with it.

But I got there. I made it one sweaty piece to the ESY. And it was good to be there. It refreshed me, but when I was leaving, I realized that the change of clothes I brought for school was missing, namely my shorts. They had fallen out when my backpack decided to puke its belly out...

So then I was frazzled all over again. I took the bus back to the scene of the spill, praying that no one--poor college student, homeless person, dog--had swooped in on my shorts because they were my newest pairs and I was quite attached...

Well, the bus came--I didn't miss this one, thank God, and as I walked toward where my backpack had decided to rebel on me, squinting from behind my sunglasses...there they are. Crumpled on the sidewalk, but not looking the worse for wear (literally, I suppose). I picked them up, reprimanding them (yes, I really did), and then caught another bus to campus where I arrived late to Psychology 160, sweaty and disheveled once again.

I finally landed in my seat after climbing over a giant of a student (seriously, whose legs have the decency to be that long and bulky), and proceeded to check my Facebook on my phone. Oh, excuse me, I forgot to say I started taking notes before that. Anyway, I was flipping through my notifications, when I saw this article that my brother had sent me about a pipeline explosion in the slums in Nairobi, Kenya (I like this article more though). I read it during lecture and watched the video clip when I got home, and both times something inside me wrenched itself. I felt my eyes fill up with tears.



Was I really in slums much like Sinai, where the explosion happened, just three months ago? I've seen tin shacks with corrugated roofs, sludgy black water, and tired faces with my own eyes--not mediated by my laptop screen from across the world. I've held those hands, smiled at those children, and hugged those people. Now I'm distant. Far off. And those memories feel the same way.

I am horrified. Horrified at systems of oppression in Kenya. Horrified at the desperation of those pushed to the bottom rungs of society. Horrified at myself for thinking that missing a few buses constituted a Bad Day. Horrified at my stupid vanity, for caring so much for a pair of shorts. Horrified that I've been so terribly successful at pushing all my memories of Kenya to the far recesses of my mind.

There's a lot of brokenness in the world out there. And there's a lot in that heart in here.