Come and See

  Do not come to visit the Karen people in order to sing Christmas carols. Do not come to visit the Karen to visit without your own need to be moved to conversion yourself by listening to the Karen preach and sing hymns. Do not come to visit the Karen to experience exotic tourism, or to shop for the textiles to wear to show friends “back home” how far you came, the experience you had by meeting villagers (those who sold tourists traditional clothes) deep in a forest where the young people wear t-shirts that idolize Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, 50 Cents, or are leftover from the 1994 Michigan State Swim Team. Do not drop in one weekend to give Frisbees to the refugee children in hopes the round plastic disk will deter them from turning to drugs, or even finding a better use for the Frisbee as a plate to feed the family ducks and chickens. Do not come to study the Karen, to further your studies in International Development or complete fieldwork for an advanced degree in Anthropology. But do come and visit. Come live with the Karen if you only and are searching for who really is family in the world of being human. Stay awhile. Especially when you mostly want to leave to return to the “known world” or know the world news of the day. Come live with the Karen people and romanticize life. You will find that through the people you meet, who happen to be Karen by nationality, who have customs and traditions of so much beauty (just like your own), that it is not so much that here lies a lifestyle to romanticize (ex. “I really want to live ‘like this’; I wish I was Karen!”), but that through life among a different culture, you can better romanticize and idealize what an incredibly wondrous thing it is to be human.

A great human error is to use reason before finding out. - Simone Weil