When I spend a long time in one environment, my ego starts inflating until it reaches an unsustainable level and suddenly bursts. It then inflates again and bursts again, each time taking longer to complete a cycle. I’ve come to believe that this is my comfort-challenge cycle. I think better and better of myself as I get more and more comfortable, then I realize that something is not as I understand it and that forces me to become more humble. As my perception of what’s around me complicates, the process slows down.

I love the two poles of the cycle: the ignorant satisfaction of complacency and the sobering wisdom of humility. I feel like I need them both to grow and mature and flower. And I’ve noticed that putting myself out there allows me to experience the cycle (which I can only affect unpredictably by choosing my environment) more often.

Studying theory makes me feel like I know stuff. I knew statistics that show most favelas in Rio de Janeiro did not have drug trafficking; I knew that residents of occupied buildings in Sao Paulo’s city center were not criminals; I knew that the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Yemen is the most charitable group in the country. Look at me, so knowledgeable and well traveled. I must be an asset to any community or organization. If only they knew how special I was… maybe not.

I do believe that I’m an asset, I have a lot to offer and I’m sure the places I worked at have benefited from my presence. Nonetheless, I can’t think of any environment to which I gave more than what was given to me. I knew the statistics about favelas, but I didn’t understand them. Interacting with people from favelas, loving a few of them, seeing them celebrate helped me understand. Residents of occupations did the same for me, and the Muslim Brotherhood folks too. It is harder and more rewarding to understand something than it is to know it. Understanding expands horizons, and it humbles.

It humbles me when I understand something because I feeeel it. Being away from Yemen for many months in the past, and presently for years, has allowed me to distance myself from the country

enough to forget realities I was once intimate with. It could be a coping mechanism because I can’t feel good about myself if I understand (and thus feel) the unjust difference between my reality and that of my countrymen. I am certainly not special enough to deserve what I have, but it doesn’t matter. Beating myself up over it will not change anything, I have to cope, to convince myself of something else. I understand how unjust this is. And I hate it. It makes me feel like a brat, and it doesn’t matter. Understanding takes time and reinforcement: it’s a moving experience, sometimes too moving and scary, but I believe it’s good and necessary for progress.

I find that the internet is great for knowing and so is theory, but for understanding, human interactions, literature, and experiences are necessary. College, even Smith College, has flaws, but it allowed me to experience both acquiring knowledge through classes and acquiring understanding through praxis, other humans connected to Smith, and study abroad. I am so grateful, and I only wish that more Smithies would seek to understand others and let the world move them (hopefully to action but a change of perception is real too) like it sometimes moves me… pat on the back.

 

Born and raised in Yemen, Nashua Alsharki left the country to attend a boarding school in Hong  Kong (UWC) when she was seventeen.  Two years later, she came to Smith, then left for a year to study abroad in Brazil.  She is now back at Smith as a senior carrying baggage from everywhere she’s lived and with no place to call home. But the odds are in her favor.

by