Having read the whole book, two ideas in particular stand out to me: Guilt and Resilience.
I agree with Kennedy when he says that guilt is a luxury. I understand the feelings associated with privilege so I know where Jessica is coming from when she describes it as an “inescapable infection”. Growing up, because so many of the people I interacted with every day were similarly privileged, I guess I kind of operated under the assumption that everybody felt a little bit badly about their privilege every now and then. Even before we are old enough to autonomically recognize our privilege, parents get us to eat our food by telling us some kids have no plates of food to push away, teachers get us to pay attention in class by reminding us some children wish they could be in this classroom, et cetera.
The middle chapters of the book showed me that there are in fact some people who do not feel badly about their privilege, because they truly have none. Guilt is a luxury. Some people are beaten down time and time again by the systems that orchestrate their life to the point that they never feel lucky.
We might tell Jessica that a possible cure to this infection, or at least ease the feeling that guilt brings, is to use that privilege for good. We also discussed Kennedy’s idea that Americans “always think the rest of the world is just waiting for your money.” A classmate pointed out that this is probably linked to the capitalistic, individualistic mindset in the US which I think was a really great insight. The idea that money and abundance can solve any problem connects back to American greed (think Ubuntu) and even the ‘guilt is a luxury’ idea. We touched a little on the White savior complex. White Americans seem to be very uncomfortable with their privilege and the solution is to throw money at it. But there has to be a more thoughtful and effective solution that actually benefits everyone. Enter the Intercultural Praxis model, I suppose!
Moreover, I think my biggest takeaway from this book is Kennedy’s incredible resilience that struck me throughout. The violence he has witnessed is completely unfathomable and if just reading about them makes me so uncomfortable, I can hardly imagine it happening before one’s eyes in their reality. Beyond that, he writes about ‘cheating death’ three times in a span of a few days. This, too, is unimaginable to me. To be so close to death and the incredible amounts of fear attached to it. I didn’t even know human beings could survive carrying all that weight.
A few things about Kennedy’s mindset and life philosophy stood out to me. His experiences, even the highly adverse and abnormal ones, shape all of his life endeavors, including the arguably ‘normal’ ones like forgiveness and love. The quote “life is about choosing what you hold” stands out.
