Americans’ favorite question: “So, what do you do?”

My answer, as a young, tall, Southern blonde, is not what many expect: “I’m working on a project to preserve oral history in Kenya.”

The asker’s reactive expressions follow a predictable path: surprise, interest, concern that revealing interest will lead to a boring dissertation on historical preservation, distress that this information could lead to a funding request, and…in the end: a glossing over and search for an exit strategy.”  (Levels of expressive subtlety are generally determined by environment: coffee shop, dance club, dinner party, or otherwise.  Libraries are havens, consistently spawning genuine interest.)

Perhaps I’m being unfair.  There are many people who take great interest in this cause, who praise its significance, who realize that we learn about ourselves by learning about others.  Or they just like me enough to listen. 

I began questioning myself.  How can it be that something I’m so passionate about be met with apathy?  And then I realized something: the only way this strange world can work is if different people believe in different things and support different causes. (Please don’t misunderstand me: I think this project deserves your interest, and your support, but no hard feelings if it’s not the center of your world.) 

I realized that, to paraphrase historian Theodore Rosengarten, I am the center of my own attention, no one else’s.  To combat self-doubt, I’m currently buried in books and conversation and not looking up long enough to think about how much I don’t know or how much money I don’t have or how much more time I wish I had.  I hear this is common for people doing this sort of thing.      

Talk soon – Laura Lee

Ps- I love a challenge, so don’t be worried about me.  I’ll be back oozing positivity and idealism in my next blog, I promise.