Do-gooder hiatus

One of our good friends here resigned from the international school this week. His reason is primarily that he's not doing the work he wants to do.  He wanted to become a teacher to help kids who needed it most. Now he feels like he's teaching privileged kids who would do well in life with or without him, and collecting a paycheck rather than making a difference. His situation is actually more complex than that, but it certainly makes me think.

In the past I have described Brian and myself as professional do-gooders, save the world types, idealists, bleeding hearts etc. That's a little exaggerated, or sarcastic, or maybe both. I don't want to make it sound like we deserve some kind of award. We don't hug trees or take in stray animals or spend our weekends working at food shelves. In fact we never really volunteered at all. Brian taught at an inner-city school and I worked at a nonprofit human services agency. We would get up and go to work and sometimes gripe about it like everyone else. There were days I sat in meetings and dealt with paperwork and staff problems. It was not always heroic or gratifying. It's just that Brian and I both chose work that ultimately had a positive impact in our community, or at least we felt like it did.

Now that we live in Germany, we mostly just take care of ourselves. Sure, there are kids at the school who need help with their lessons and need attention and maybe even need a role model. But they all come from well-to-do families and will generally be ok to handle adult life no matter what they learn in Geography class. And as for me, I am learning German and working on my masters program for my own needs and interests. I am doing subbing and consulting work to make some money and because I like it.

And I have decided that's ok. We are not developing nuclear weapons, advertising cigarettes, or chasing ambulances. Nothing we do has a negative impact on other people. We are just trying something different for a while.

Someday we'll be back to professionally saving the world. For now we understanding how people live in another culture in another place. Some of those people are rich international school students. Maybe we can learn something from knowing them too.