Precarious Life

“Let’s face it, we’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something”(p. 23).

I was pretty excited this last Friday when a girl in the math class I am tutoring asked me for help. Outside of the few students I tutor each week on a one-to-one basis, it is very rare for any of the students to be interested enough in the work to actually do it, let alone ask on of “them” to help. I say “them” because the feeling inside these classrooms is very similar to the “us against them” mentality that Butler describes as a catalyst of dehumanization. To illustrate this point, let me tell you about what one of the kids said this last Friday. For one reason or another, on this particular day, there were only 6 students in the class, while there were 3 teachers and 3 tutors. When one of the administrators walked in, one of the “harder” students looked up and said: “Great, they have us outnumbered.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of being a student paying $30,000 a year - in large part to have such a such a hands on experience in my education- and being considered to be one of “them” as if I was there to perform some sort of water-boarding rather then teach them the factor tree.

But I’ve digressed. Let me return to my original point and the girl who went against the grain of the majority of the Community School Students and asked me for help. I helped her remember the concept of factorization and she started working on a problem. She made it halfway through the problem, then turned her attention to a nearby conversation her classmates were having about who was drinking what, at which party that night. I got her attention refocused on the problem and again she made it about halfway through the problem and then became engaged in an eraser throwing war with the same nearby students. This continued on for the greater part of the period. When the bell rang she had completed three problems that probably could have been done in a focused environment in less than a minute. Her attempt and her need to do her work had been “undone” by those she was surrounded by. However it was not the intentional acts of those that she was surrounded by that prevented her from remaining focused (they did not divert her attention intentionally). Rather it was her own feeling that she was “missing out” on something that kept drawing her back into their conversation and away from her doing her work and benefiting herself.

You’re right, I can’t help but think of events in my life that make me shutter when I read that quote. As much as I’d like to blame my teammates for costing me my basketball scholarship and my lifelong dream of playing professional basketball, it was my own feeling that I was missing out on something that diverted my energy from my own life and goals and lumped them together with the choices and actions of my teammates. I realize that I am taking this quote in a context different from how the author intended it, but it is this interpretation that allowed me to make a connection to my service learning, my own life.

I agree with the author’s suggestion of our interconnectedness and that our ability to more clearly “feel” this connectedness can be enhanced by loss and subsequent grieving of this loss. In the words of Butler,
But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. (p. 22)

While I find this point by the author to be valid and real, I find the inverse to be equally interesting and powerful. Perhaps it is our ability and willingness to separate ourselves from others and grieve, mourn and grow from the resulting feeling of loneliness that allows us to find who we truly are, and frees us to do the right thing. As scary as it is to think of yourself as at odds with the actions of your own country, community or family, perhaps it is the ability to accept your independence and grieve the loss of identity and acceptance based on these relationships that allows us to do what is truly in our hearts and find our true identities based on belief, acceptance and action and not geographical location. Along these same lines, had the girl been willing to accept her independence from her classmates and grieve the loss of them as her community, maybe she would be able to remain focused on her work and not the destructive behaviors of her peers. Maybe she could graduate Community School and move on to college and a life she never would have if she remained interconnected with her current community at the school. There comes a time in many relationships whether it be romantic, religious, school, political or familial, that the relationship no longer serves you and prevents you from being the person who you desire to be. Identifying and separating yourself from these relationships is truly difficult, but it is the grieving –which allows you to remain separate and move on – that is most difficult of all.