What do I stand for. Part 2

What do I Stand for? Part 2.

Last year I wrote a blog to go along with a song by F.U.N. called Some Nights. I wrote this blog while I was in Uganda. I was having a difficult time understand the things that were going on around me and trying to figure out what I believed and stood for in a world where money and appearance seems to be the driving force. Now a year later from the day that I left the United States to go to Uganda I am still left with many of those same questions and lack of understanding of what I stand for.

I have had people tell me since the post that I stand for God. That not what I mean by the phrase ‘what do I stand for’. The phrase is meant to prompt a thought process of is what I’m doing really helping those in which I aim to help or is it causing harm, is the things I believe in helping people or causing them grief. Is who I am what I want to be? I’ve been on this journey for the past year, realizing the things I grew up believe are not necessarily correct, and not what I want to believe or who I want to be.

The town in which I go to school in is part of the top 10 poorest counties in the States. This knowledge frustrates me knowing that I am leaving one of the poorest communities of the States but yet there is nothing I can do to fix it. This is a statement I would have said before I went to Uganda. Yes, it still frustrates me that I can’t take away all the bad in the world. But, now when I drive through the town of Marion and see the things that I would have once call broken, I see beauty! Poverty is not a direct association to brokenness.

“Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world in moving.” This quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a major leader in the women’s right movement, embodies a lot of what I stand for now. I, like Stanton, stand for women’s rights and the right for women to do what they believe needs to be done to take care of there own body, which I believe no man should dictate. This quote also emphasizes the importance to see people for who they are and not what a book says about them. To wipe away the damnation in which we view people but to see them has living breathing humans.  

“Some Nights” by F.U.N still plays a major role in my life. The song has deeper meaning to me. Since being back in the States the song has taken on a different meaning, a meaning that is complex, confusing and beautiful all at the same thing. A few of the lyrics to the song are, “But I still wake up, I still see your ghost Oh, Lord, I'm still not sure what I stand for, oh.” I dream. When I go to sleep I dream of cheerful, unhappy, frightening, and good things. I dream about things that happen in my life and about being apart of Harry Potter, which unfortunately is not real. But even when I dream and it’s hard to wake up and move due to the paralyzing fear that I experience “I still wake up”. I still wake up, me like many people who have fears and doubts. Knowing that the things the ones paralyzed me is not what I stand for, advocating for those people and for the understanding.  I stand for me.