heroes...

(windhoek, namibia) i attended a meeting with the minister of education today. it is amazing to sit down and speak with a man who's picture is hanging up on the wall behind him. he mentioned how the three men sitting at the table with us (including himself) were freedom fighters that were in exile during the end up apartheid. it is one thing to read about these events, to flip the pages of nelson mandela's book, but it is another to speak with a legend directly.

it makes me think however. all of these people were heroes of circumstance. for the most part, they were in the right place at the right time. they were fighting for their own rights as well as the rights of their people. they were not butting into problems that were not theirs. sometimes i get lost in whether a matter is that communities matter and we are outsiders looking in or whether its all relative and we are all in the same community in the end.

i'm a one world-er. i do believe we all came from one place and we are all heading for one place. the rifts and particulars that divide us now are just transitional. i cannot let myself be defined by a color, a religion (or lack there of), a country, an ethnicity. i think you catch my drift. the more experience i get however, the more i'm questioning if i'm alone in that FUNDAMENTAL thought. it seems like every human being wants to identify with something, i even catch myself many a time.