Identity and Belonging, however many years later

 “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” -Alasdair Macintyre

There is a paradox which goes, "nothing matters, so everything matters." Henri Nouwen writes on this, concluding with what keeps these together is the statement, "God Exists." He says, "All is now clothed in divine light and therefore nothing can be unimportant."

I am writing in the backyard of the home I bought, watching my beautiful dog sniff around our new sprightly tortoise. I didn't want to write on a blog more closely dated to this year. I was texting J, the only G brother of all the Ds. I told him I used to write to find answers. I told him "that's kinda what college does to/for you, force you to ask hard quesetions and sit with incomplete answers". I wonder if I should write the fourth brother a letter, an honest one. Ask his forgiveness for something I'm not sorry for doing, but sorry for the impacts. 

I haven't written about myself without devolving into regrets and pondering actions to take to respond in forever. I would like to take this time to respond to the prompt I have found for myself. To see if I can still do it. Be honest and go deep and explore myself without jumping to to-do lists to be left uncrossed. 

Of what stories do I find myself a part? 

I find myself apart of at least three stories that guide what I am to do with my self. 1) I find myself, I claim myself, to be a part of my mother's parents stories. Two people from Fresno County, Great Depression and WWII survivors who chose liberalism, civil rights, globalism and Fresno. 2) I find myself a part of FIRM. An intern who was so loved, she kept coming back for more. Someone who got to be smart and caring and contribute that fully to this beautiful community. Someone who got to use her gifts of seeing how things connect in ways that helped people connect to one another. 3) I find myself in a love story, with a conscientious and quiet man whose father meant something to the world, to me, and to these worlds of migration studies that I dream of joining. and lastly, although I go back and forth on its significance, 4) I find myself in this story of Christianity in the twentyfirst century of the United States. A story of the church collapsing, of great clarity around white supremacy, of empire, and of interfaith dialogue. 

What am I to do?

I just got back from visiting my brother, and after three and a half years of pandemic, it was so nice to just travel and be elsewhere. Prior to that I visited a friend and we explored NYC. Its been so long since I stared at the coast with the amiga. Been so long since I had a car of my own. I need space to exist outside of being useful. I am not sure what to think or how to label my impulse to work with refugees and immigrants in my hometown. There is a strange almost conservative logic that I'm uncomfortable with in the idea that seems to imply that home is best and migration is wrong or bad or antihuman in some way. Maybe its the forced part that I react so strongly to. Even the framing of forced migration bothers me, knowing that there were key choices and agency along the way. 

Part of me dreams of going to school again, of having time to think, to write, to read and to debate. I look at the Oxford programme and sigh. I look up law school and wonder about immigration law. I think deeply to myself and wonder about PhDing, once I am done with FIRM. 

Part of me dreams of living abroad again, too. As a part of a PhD program, or separately. I wonder what I would be like, just working somewhere, doing policy analysis, or managing a team, or writing writing writing. 

Part of today's what to do came from realizing I need to write more. I need to write more. I need to write. Even this blog feels good, even the hour long distraction of Amazon shopping, MFA glimpsing and tortoise researching, feels like me. Feels good. 

My love story is with someone who doesn't write or think about abstract ideas, except the stars and the planets and theoretical physics. He is ready for kids when I am, but I made him promise before we got married that if I was never ready, that would be okay too. 

Talking with the amiga, I can put research together in my head. I would love to be a shadow writer for her, for CBDIO, for the research that provides nuance and complexity to how we understand identity and belonging in California, in the world, in the networks of migration that pulse every day. 

I wonder. I wonder.