A comment on a comment
(To the reader of the "Why I love Villa Park" blog entry, I didn't know where to reach you, so this is my response.)
In a country and even in a part of the world where frivolity and excessiveness are as familiar and flagrant as the stifled air we breathe, my motivation for examining the wonders of suburban life were quite simple and naïve; to give thanks and recognition for a privilege that is not so easily bestowed upon others. Knowing that with a simple twist of fate in my own parents’ lives, I could have very fluently transitioned to the after-math of war-torn poverty in a third world country, feeding off only the despair and furled pride that remains.
It is indeed the sense of community that unites us, but the fact remains that without the underlying environment, community is nothing. We are physical beings that take in the breath of life, but are forced to succumb to its sometimes harsh, calloused hands as well. And so the community that envelops us also in turn, shapes us.
Would I gladly grow up in a place that emits a few chlorofluorocarbons versus suffering the effects of 2,4-D (Agent Orange), or sit in a deadlock of traffic for an interminable amount of time, versus having my home and privacy ransacked by communist officials?? The answer on both accounts is most definitely yes.
And so my response to the idea that we are “spoiled” in our riches and matriculation through an inflated educational system is that I completely agree, but I am supremely conscious of what the alternative could and still might be with the right turn of events. So for all the things that I grew up with, I am not ashamed, for all the material possessions I didn’t grow up with, I am quite simply unapologetic. I know their worth and value in terms of personal appraisal, and that’s all that really matters to me.
posted by Sheila @ 8/26/2005 09:45:00 AM
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