But, when one has been in intimate contact with people struggling for the basics, when one has thrown one's lot in with them in their struggle, no matter how minimally one has joined them, one gets sensitized to life on the edges. It begins to be part of our thinking, what we enter into each day, what gives our life guidance and meaning. Then we return home. We almost immediately retreat into the lives of our loved ones whom we have missed. Their lives are full.
American lives are notoriously full.
We pick up our own works, working, studenting, mothering and fathering, whatever. Yet beneath the surface the contrasts are there. Somehow, and I think this is almost always beneath the level of conscious awareness, this duality between the struggle for necessities and the pursuit of what's beyond, raises its nagging head. Something else is required in all of this. Suppose this were so.