Savtri on prioritizing and balancing

I saw a play a couple years ago called August: Osage County. It sticks with me because of a particular theme of the story: everyone in the family is struggling with their own intra and interpersonal problems, which culminates in a collective abandonment of the impossible grandmother. The only person who takes care of her, without judgment and without exasperation, is the maid who is not a part of the family. So, what does it take for us to be nice to each other? Some sort of separation or belief that this too shall pass?

I had an awesome time with my host mother, Aunt Shireen, when Melissa and I did a homestay with her in Ocean View, a township near Fish Hoek. We talked a lot, met some of her friends and learned about their perspectives on the ANC and apartheid, and shared delicious rooti and curry. I met with Shireen again on Saturday and got to talk about some of her perspectives on religion. We both turned out to agree that everyone is good and bad; there is that potential in everyone. I love the Native American analogy of a Chief telling his grandson about the epic centuries-long battle of two wolves – one good and one bad. When the boy asks the Chief which one wins, he responds, “The one you feed.”

However, I occasionally felt this sadness at not being able to spend more time with my Mom and Dad and Brother. I have spent so much time and energy getting to know strangers here in Cape Town that I wonder where my patience and open-mindedness goes when I try to talk with my family and friends back home. Am I so used to them that I am doomed to always take their virtues for granted? I want so badly to be able to communicate with the people I love in a way that I am able to communicate with the people that I meet here. But maybe this open, energetic communication is also the result of relative unknowingness – I do not yet know the faults of these people, I see glimpses of them but at least my relationship with them is not so deep-rooted that I feel threatened by these conflicts. Even still, which character am I more frequently playing with my family and friends – the relatives or the maid?

We did an exercise in Marita’s class a couple weeks ago having to do with values and whether we live our lives accordingly. I am pretty in tune with my values so I could see fairly easily that most of the things that I have been doing are very much in accord with what I value. However, I don’t think that I have ever prioritized those values or put a weight on how much one must be prioritized over another. Balancing as a skill has always been kind of elusive to me. It was simple in high school to prioritize school over swimming because I have grown up in a household that very seriously (and enjoyably) values education. But how do I balance something like time spent with family, friends, leisure, or study? I think that because I have prioritized school for so long now, prioritized it even over my own family and friends, I have gotten to a point where I want very much to shift that priority to my interpersonal relationships. Education is still very important to me and I will always be learning no matter what situation I’m in, but I think the type of learning I crave can only be gleaned from working on my relationships and giving more time to the people I love. I think I am ready to establish a different balancing act.