Other-Centeredness

I wanted to write one blog entry about one of the values which I have been seeking to cultivate: other-centeredness. At Brown, I sometimes was a little frustrated by the underlying self-centeredness of the experience. Despite the students’ dedication to causes, student groups or what have you, in the end, you’re there to get a degree to get you where you want to go. Or you’re there to have experiences and build yourself up for the future world. Sometimes I thought that this underlying self-centeredness prevented true community life from really growing up. In Peace Corps, on the other hand, we are charged with the development of others. (Depending on your motives, you’re also here to develop yourself, like I am.) Part of being a PCV, in any case, should be holding the interests of others to be paramount.

In what does other-centeredness consist? One part, certainly, is working for the development of others, directing one’s energies toward others. Another part is when an opportunity comes up in everyday life to serve others, you take it. This would include common courtesies, giving little gifts, accompanying people when they have to go somewhere, etc. The third part, I think, surpasses the level of action and gets to the level of consciousness. This is actually having your thoughts centered on other people. And not in the way which someone who is in love has his thoughts centered on the object of his desire. But if one is other-centered in this way, he lives in a world which is not dominated by him, which does not revolve around him, but rather around others.

Over the last four years, I too have been quite self-centered: in the first aspect, to a certain extent. I lacked will to invest heavily in a lot of relationships. But at least during college I usually made the decisions to serve the Christian fellowship despite what other opportunities there might have been. And I took steps toward orienting my life toward vocations of service. With the second and third aspects of other-centeredness, I wasn’t too good. These aspects have to do with one’s disposition, and I was busy and therefore self-involved.

So how am I doing up until now? Well, on the first count, good. Since leaving training, I’ve been working in the muni for the development of my municipio. And that’s pretty much a given in Peace Corps. As long as you get here, try hard and orient your activities toward things the people want (OK, it’s not that easy!), you’ll be fulfilling that goal. On the second count, taking up random opportunities to serve people, I’m accompanying people when they need to go somewhere, for instance, but it’s hard to overcome two self-imposed limits: my schedule (though I’m not as busy as in college, I’m still fairly busy, and I always feel the need to get home by 7:30 or 8:00 to eat dinner, or though you may not believe it, write e-mails or blog entries) and money, not because I’m struggling for money, but more for how to spend it.

Here I’ll permit myself a small detour to talk a little bit about spending money: Peace Corps gives me a living allowance to pay for my food, rent, vacations, transport, incidentals, etc. I’m currently living with a host family and am paying them for my food and rent, which comes to only about 40% of that living allowance. So I’m not scraping by, I have enough money to pay my expenses. The people I know best here in site are not extremely poor either, especially in comparison to the overall population (in 2001, the poverty rate in our municipio was 94% and the extreme poverty rate 57%). Most are muni workers, professionals though they lack college degrees, and make about the same amount as I do. Others are young people from in town, who may not have any money but certainly aren’t starving. On the other hand, those who have jobs aren’t just providing for themselves, generally. One of my co-workers’ fathers passed away two years ago when a tree he was cutting down fell on him, leaving his wife and nine children without any income. Now my co-worker, who is 21, and his sister, 19, work to cover the family’s expenses. Anyway, all of this is to say that I still have somewhat more money than the majority of people I spend time with, even though they’re not extremely poor.

In Guatemala, property is not really private in the way it is in the U.S. People who have money are to some extent expected to buy things for other people. A simple example is cell phone calls. Cell phone service is done here by buying minutes (prepaid), and a lot of people are usually without minutes on their phone. So they are always asking for you to lend them their phone to make a few calls. And the question people ask is not, “Would you be willing to lend me your phone?” but rather, “Do you have minutes?” as if one’s having minutes obligates them to give up their phone. Another example would be people who have gone to the U.S. – they always come back from El norte (the north) bearing many gifts for family and friends. They like to share their new riches. A final example might be buying food, especially the customary midmorning snack. It is rare that each person goes to buy their own snack. One person generally has to invite and pay for everybody else’s snack, and that will more than likely be the person who has the most money at the time. As I’ve explained above, that person often is me. But it’s not fun to buy snack for everybody every day, so I rarely do it. Though I’ve spouted a lot of rhetoric about communal ownership and sharing of resources, I find it very hard to actually do it – to buy things for people once is fine, but establishing the pattern of buying people things, I feel, will just lead them to take advantage of me a lot. And for that thought pattern, possibly others feel like I am hoarding money and I am selfish, so maybe in this way I’m not fulfilling the second facet of other-centeredness.

The level of consciousness is the most difficult level to achieve other-centeredness, I think, perhaps unless you were raised in a culture which seriously cultivated other-centeredness. And unfortunately in the majority of situations where a culture encourages a certain group of people to be other-centered (think women), it follows that that group is forced into servant status in the society. So how do you cultivate other-centeredness, in which the joys of servanthood, or better said, servant leadership, are experienced, but without being socially excluded?

In training, I actually reached a high level of other-centeredness in my consciousness for me. I was spending so much time with my host family, and was so wrapped up in their issues, that my life actually began to revolve around them, possibly more than around me. I actually wanted to orient all of my activities toward them, and I primarily thought about how my activities would affect them, how they would perceive my actions. In contrast to today, my journal entries from that period primarily describe their lives and the issues they faced. And the period was very intense – it was very fulfilling to reach that level of other-centeredness, but the part of me that was self-focused got pretty tired at times. There were many times when I really didn’t want to go play with the kids and I just wanted to sit by myself, but I went with them. And it was rewarding and those kids love me dearly for it, but at the same time it was very tiring.

And so getting to site, I’ve become more self-centered again in this aspect. My family life is great, but not consuming. My work is focused on building others up, but in no way do I know the people I’m serving in the COCODES of my town as well as I knew my old host family. And it’s very hard to be other-conscious of people with whom you don’t have an intimate relationship. Also, I’ve been mostly focusing on myself trying to best position myself for life and work in site for the next two years. Though it seems that much has happened, I’m still only about 10% into my service as a full-blown Peace Corps Volunteer. I’ve felt that it’s more important to discover on who I’m going to be in site right now so that in the future I can help others. And maybe in that future, I can reach this level of other-consciousness again.