Last night, I stumbled into my apartment after about twelve hours of everything except eating. I was terrifically hungry, and couldn't have differentiated between a peanut butter sandwich and the Holy Grail. I noticed ants on the table and flicked them away.
I unscrewed the peanut butter lid and got a bit of a shock. Hundreds and hundreds of ants were swarming in my peanut butter jar, mostly in the cap. I slammed the cap on the table and out fell a couple hundred ants. I brushed them off the table and crunched them with bare feet. I don't know that I've ever been so furious at a living creature. That was MY peanut butter!
I then proceeded to take my knife and scoop out every single ant into the toilet. Twenty minutes later, I was able to convince myself that my peanut butter was ant free. I cleaned my knife like wiping blood from a sword, and returned to the table where I brushed off the rest of the ants. My bread was untouched, and I quickly resisted the urge to wonder what that meant about my bread. The sandwiches were quickly made, a water bottle quickly grabbed; with my book and my food and my water, I was in paradise, ants already forgotten.
Bite. Bite. Unscrew water cap. Bite. Swig. CHOKE! Because, as it happens, that was the bottle into which I dumped my bug spray when I filled the bug spray bottle with alcohol. After five minutes of rinsing my mouth and generally dwelling on the unhappy events of the evening, I returned to my sandwiches and my book. And a trustworthy bottle of water.
Skip forward nine hours. I woke and picked up the peanut butter (which I had tied up in a plastic bag) to make breakfast. Nope. The ants found a hole. I spent my shower time once again purging my peanut butter jar. Interestingly, until I thought to myself "WWAD"—"What Would an American Do?"—I never considered tossing the peanut butter. Disclaimer: that's certainly an unfair generalization, but I'm an American, so I get to generalize. So there. Anyways.
An hour later I arrived at the church, hungry but ready to be productive. There was an ant on my desk, and I squashed it out of residual resentment. Thanks to my clumsy finger and the ant's sturdy exoskeleton, I only succeeding in squishing a portion of it. It valiantly attempted to drag itself to safety. It made me think about degrees of problem severity.
1st Degree, me at home, age 15: I'm bored.
2nd Degree, me at work, age 19: I have too much work to do.
3rd Degree, me in Haiti, age 20: I'm hungry and food may not be available in the next twelve hours.
10th Degree, PB Scout Ant, age 25 days: Part of my body has been flattened into the ground, and my intestines are sticking to the table making it more difficult to drag myself away from this dangerous area.
Sure puts my problems in perspective. Still, I have yet to meet the man or woman who thinks, "well, at least it's not worse" and suddenly feels better about life. So how can this apply practically to me, and how can I allow this perspective to give me more grace and patience?
The answer lies in looking at how the ant deals with its problem. It's obviously in a pretty serious predicament, one from which it will almost certainly die. So how does it react? It puts one leg in front of the other. Instead of trying to fix the problem, it does its best to make the problem better.
I've never owned a car that was perfectly reliable, mostly because I've never spent enough on a car to warrant a dependable vehicle. As a result, I'm used to my car breaking down. My good friends know my most common reaction.
I start walking.
I know it will take hours to get home. I know I can probably get somebody to pick me up. But at least the problem is decreasing in magnitude instead of increasing (a psychological escalation in problem magnitude is called "panic"), and if everybody is occupied, I will have already put my solution into action.
I'm not arguing against efficiency. I'm sure the ant wouldn't have refused an ant-medic, if there is such a thing. I do think, though, that if a problem is unmanageably huge, sometimes the only thing to do is try to make it smaller.
I have a lot of duties here, so it's pretty easy for me to attend to the ones that are doable and ignore those that are intimidating to me. Jean wants to build a second level on his church to accommodate all the people who are attending, and he asked me to look into ways to raise money.
To raise nearly two million dollars. Gulp.
Maybe I ought to stop looking at the immensity of the problem, and start with the first hundred dollars. I can find that. And I can move on from there. I want to be in a place where I can say, "if I keep doing what I'm doing right now, the problem will eventually be solved."
So I'm going to go and raise some funds. And put that peanut butter jar somewhere out of reach.
Now, let's learn some Haitian Creole. I'm going to do some review today on basic tense changes.Come : Vini (vee-nee)
You come : Ou'vini (oo-vee-nee)
I'm coming : M'ap vini (mop-vee-nee) Full form would be "mwen ap vini"
I am going to come (later) : M'pral vini (mm-pral-vee-nee)
I came : M'te vini (mm-tay-vee-nee)
You come here now! : Ou vini la kounya! (oo-vee-nee-lah-koon-yeh)
Later : Pita (pee-tah) Literally, "more late"
We are going to come later : Nou pral vini pita (noo-pral-vee-nee-pee-tah)
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If you are new to this newsletter and would like some background, please visit my blog, which contains an archive of all my updates. Here is my contact information:
Phone Number: 011-509-617-7720
Address for Letters : Pastor Jean Petit-Frére, P.O. Box 407139, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl, 33340
Address for Packages: Pastor Jean Petit-Frére, 2525 NW 55 Court, Hangar #24, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl, 33340
Important: Remember to address it to "Paster Jean Petit-Frére" and write "Attn: Dan" on the back of the envelope or package. Thanks!
God Bless,
Dan
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