The blogger as an aging columnist?

Next month I’ll be 40.

When I first came to Bolivia nearly 15 years ago, in my mid-20s, one of the challenges I used to face – one lots of missioners, Peace Corps volunteers, and other do-gooders face – was being placed on a pedestal by my friends back home. They would talk about me like I was some kind of saintly hero. Lately, I’ve noticed this doesn’t happen so much anymore. And that’s great.

The language missioners use to describe why we do what we do often involves the idea of “being called.” In my experience, this calling doesn’t mean a person was out for a jog one morning when a neighbor’s azalea spontaneously combusted and a voice from the sky said, “Fill out the Lay Missioners’ inquiry form on page 29 of this month’s Maryknoll Magazine.” It means we feel naturally drawn to the life and work of an overseas missioner, likely as an outgrowth of both a particular kind of personality and a particular set of faith-based motivating values. For a Peace Corps volunteer or an employee of USAID, the motivation may be somewhat different, and the values may be secular ones, but the sense of being drawn to the work is similar.

So, this is the work we want to do. It’s exciting and interesting and fulfilling to us. I’ve talked to a lot of missioners who echo my own experience of feeling like a bit of a fraud when friends are so quick to praise us, because more than anything, we feel privileged and grateful to be able to live out such a rewarding vocation, and as individuals we rarely feel worthy of it. We certainly don’t do it as a form of penance, nor does it feel like a great sacrifice.

Sure, there are elements that are difficult, as there are with all jobs. Missing family and friends is chief among these. And being held up as something special only seems to exacerbate feelings of distance and isolation. I think that’s a big piece of why it feels so uncomfortable to be placed on a pedestal by friends who say, “You’re such a good person for doing what you do,” or, worse, “I don’t do anything meaningful or interesting compared to you.”  Being abroad, especially in the days before widespread email and social networking, I found this particularly bothersome when it came in the form of an excuse for not responding to the letters I would write to friends back home.

“I love reading all about your adventures in Bolivia. But you don’t want to hear about my boring life and meaningless job here,” they might finally scribble. “Yes I do!” I’d think. “I’m dying to! Tell me all about it! I’m 25 and my night life consists of going out to a bar once every month or two, and most of my friends are aging priests and nuns! Tell me about the newest club and who you’re dating and what a jerk your boss is!” 

But even more, I liked it when people told me about the things that mattered most to them. Because of course, big things mattered as much to them as they did to me. I often feel I’m just not as good at keeping those big things in the mix of my life if I don’t set things up so as to always have them front-and-center. I’m able to be compassionate and politically engaged and faith-centered in large part because I’ve literally made that my job. But I fear if I were working for a profit-based company somewhere, I’d find it hard to keep connected to those interests. 

Now, though, I find myself hurtling into middle age. I have a wife and two kids. I’m in Bolivia, doing mission work, and many of my friends are back in the U.S. working corporate jobs. But they, too, are married and raising kids. And so now, we talk about that. And I’ve noticed something: nobody thinks their own families are boring and meaningless. They know as well as I do that we’re both struggling to live out our most deeply held values in a challenging and precarious world, and that raising our children and loving our spouses is the most important work we ever could have taken on. And friends without spouses or children are really no different. We have all had time to find what matters most to us. It may or may not involve work. We have reflected on what we want out of life, what kind of people we want to be, what we believe. And so we have plenty to talk about. My stories about Bolivian prisons and being tear-gassed in street protests may still be among the more exotic cocktail party anecdotes, but what we really all want to talk about is our kid’s loose tooth or a parent’s health problems or how to end the wars or a friend who lost her job and may or may not keep her home. 

People still admire the work I do. And that, in and of itself, doesn’t bother me. I do it because many of my heroes are missioners and I find what they do and what I strive to do important and worthwhile. But sometimes I wish that, when I set off on my career path, I’d had the foresight to appreciate how important providing for my own family would become. I look at friends who are incredibly good people, are raising beautiful happy families, do worthwhile and ethical work selling things or providing services that people need, are planting gardens and participating in the PTA and making financial donations that render the work I do possible, and have also managed to own a home and save for their retirement and their kids’ education, and whatever little part of me might have been secretly clinging to the old pedestal quickly lets it go.