Too late
A decade ago I embarked on a journey to Rashidieh, a mixed but primarily Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. I spent three months there as a volunteering youth envoy of ‘Palestinakomiteen i Norge’ together with the close friend who had invited me along.
Though it’s referred to as a ‘camp’, Rashidieh is a dense city of brick & cement, housing over 30,000 people, same as Molde, the biggest city an hour away from my tiny home town. Established in 1936, Rashidieh camp is nearly a century old. As such it is an unusual place with its own flow of time.
I had done this type of longer-term stay abroad a handful times before; a rare privilege afforded to me as a worldly Norwegian citizen. While I do believe in the genuine altruism of myself and others, these journeys have always been for a selfish reason at heart. An escape. A search.
This time I was searching for meaning in the wake of my mother’s passing a year prior. In that community I was met with heartfelt compassion from people for whom the loss of family members – whole families even – was a brutally regular occurrence of life. There was no comparing my bereavement to theirs, yet we grieved together all the same, and in that grief we were equals.
For the past year I’ve kept a certain distance to the apocalyptic destruction of Palestine. I joined some of the protests and read some of the articles, but for the most part I retreated to my work for the sake of my sanity: Stay the course and focus on what you can control. Grow strong enough to lift others up when you’re able.
The invasion of southern Lebanon however shook something loose in me. So much of my work in my adult life has been driven by a desire to give back to that place, down in the south, now under siege. I had dreamed up some Big Plans for how I was going to be a good little helper. It seems now I may be too late.
Earlier this week I spent half a day just staring into empty space, sobbing. In the midst of all that sadness, it felt good and right to be emotionally connected to that place and those people again.
Yesterday I participated in the first call for the Post Growth Entrepreneurship incubator. In a small breakout group where we were encouraged to check in with each other, I spoke those feelings aloud for the first time and teared up once more.
By the end there was relief. I realized this is something very real that I’m processing, not just some imagined empathy borne out of good-boy solidarity with the oppressed.
I’m not done with that place. I haven’t given it my all yet. But I may have missed my opportunity to be the giver I imagined myself to be, and there’s a deep, heartbreaking sense of inadequacy in that recognition.
Hence the words on this page, to make space for the guilt, the anger, and the shame. I can’t do my work in the world as an ally before I’ve let these emotions pass freely through me – not to be shed as waste, but rather to be integrated with the whole of my being, like tattoos on the heart.
There’s no quick resolution to be found here. The plan failed, but my resolve as a waking citizen of the global village remains unshaken.