We Are All Connected

Everything out here is all about water. It's about how much precipitation falls in order to have a good season for livestock grazing, how susceptible the mountains are to fires, and how the rivers flow, bringing fishermen and tourists. 

As a Virginian and now West Virginia resident, this is not generally a concern for me. If my area gets into drought conditions, it usually only ends up restricting the watering of lawns or washing of cars.   But for people out here in these southwest states water is never far from their minds. Out here, it's a matter of livestock dying, from fire or drought, and losing thousands of dollars or more. It's a matter of people's livelihood.

Last year this area saw the worst and closest fires many had ever experienced.  At one point, Pam’s ranch had large forest fires coming from two sides. I can see the evidence of at least one large fire from the ranch.
  
And water is not the only difference from life out east. Other hazards, such as coyotes preying on young livestock and severe winter weather hazards, change peoples' way of life in pretty significant ways.  Being out here for more than a month, I can see that my viewpoint about the way of life out West was a bit narrow and I have gained more respect for the problems and struggles that affect the people here. 

This had me thinking about what a diverse world we live in and the difficulty of a government that needs to address a country with so many contrasting needs.  When you begin to ask 'why can't we all get along?', the issue of water use in the West as opposed to the East is a good example of why communication can falter. It also shows that, if you can see and learn the issues that someone else has to contend with, you learn, hopefully, to be less judgmental and to have more compassion.  With broader exposure to others'  ways of life, there should be more of a realization that, just because something doesn't affect me in an immediate and impacting way, it doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. 

I really believe that traveling and seeing how another person lives is one of the best ways in which we can learn to get along and live more harmoniously.  Back when I was in my late teens, I had only ever traveled by car.  It was generally to travel with family on vacations to the beach or down to southern Virginia to see extended family.  By 18, I had never been on a plane much less to a different country.  That all changed when my then boyfriend Walt set up a plane ticket for me to visit him in Germany during his military tour there.  

I was pretty excited and had no idea what to expect in a foreign country.  All I knew of Germany was what I had learned from history courses in high school about the two world wars and of course the scourge of Nazism.  Needless to say, it wasn’t the most positive view.  Still, Walt was enjoying his time there.  He was biking and hiking around the southern region near the small town of Zweibrucken and checking out some of the nearby towns and villages. 

I was going to be there during the Christmas/New Year’s holiday for three weeks in between college semesters.  My time there was truly an education and an eye-opening experience about the lives of the German people in a mostly rural region of small farms and towns.  My first impression was how beautiful and green it was.  The terrain had lots of rolling hills of agriculture. Pig farms were very prevalent.  Pork is a staple of the German diet and one of my favorite things was a grilled pork shank on brochen bread with a bit of mustard. 

Everywhere we went it was clean and tidy.  There was no litter that I could find anywhere, not along the rural roads and not in the towns or villages.  The homes and private yards were neat and well-kept. 

I also was surprised by how peaceful and orderly daily life was.  My idea of lots of police presence or lack of freedom was unfounded and I never felt oppressed or inhibited by a country that is known for more socialist programs.  All my life I had been taught a lot of negatives about socialism being the root of evil but this just wasn’t the case as I saw people living with freedom to go about their business, operate private business in the same capitalistic fashion that I saw in the US and a decided lack of homelessness and abject poverty.  There were so many things I found to be different from the impressions I had gotten at home.  

It made me rethink an awful lot about what I had been taught in school and my relationship to other people and cultures of the world.  This was the beginning of truly opening up my mind.  I do consider education to be one of the best avenues toward being a productive, well-rounded person but travel is every bit as valuable toward learning and knowledge as books and professors are.  I'm an avid reader of books of all genres which can be incredibly enlightening, it’s also important and just as educating when one steps into a world outside of their own and sees how others live, that they truly experience the differences and the similarities in such a way to appreciate them both. School curriculums are much more susceptible than first hand experience to what I would call propaganda or outright nonsense that sometimes rises from nationalistic attitudes.  

I’m a liberal-minded person and believe in a mixture of democracy, socialism and capitalism to the betterment and equal opportunity toward all of America’s citizens, not just those who have wealth and advantage on their side.  I believe that if the least of us are in dire straits it will ultimately affect the whole of society.  I know, from just opening my eyes to the circumstances of others’ less fortunate than I, that not everyone has the same opportunities.  This is a fact that unfortunately a great many people refuse to see. It's an attitude that stems directly from never having lived in someone else’s shoes.  

Living in southern Colorado for a few weeks has been an opportunity to dwell in an area where the population is more conservative-minded.  While I do cringe at some of the nationalistic and so-called patriotic rhetoric that seems mean-spirited at worst and ignorant at best, I have come to admire the can-do attitude of the people out here.  I also have come to understand the ways in which I have taken for granted the easier lifestyle of my home as opposed to certain things I have had to deal with out here.  It’s been an eye opener to say the least. There is definitely something to the concept, “try walking in another man’s shoes' instead of making judgments.

I read a couple years ago a poll that found that 90% of Americans had never traveled outside the US and that over 50% had never even traveled outside their own state.  That statistic says so much and not in a good way.  It was rather appalling to me that our country votes for our President, one of the most powerful men in the world, and yet most of our citizens know nothing about the rest of the world, its people and it’s problems.  There is no getting around the fact that in this century of the global internet and interdependent economies that we are truly more connected than many people realize.  I believe the key to a more harmonious life among different peoples’ and cultures is something as simple as walking in another person’s shoes or, at least, walking in their world. It creates more compassion and less divisiveness.  The ability to connect with someone else over our similarities and enjoy the novelty of our differences can be an enriching and enlightening experience.  I encourage everyone to get out there and connect, enjoy the differences and applaud the similarities.  Travel, explore, step out of your comfort zone.  Your life will be the better for it.