Skip to main content

Oh, your time keeps going on… And the world is last to follow

By Anonymous

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/us/candice-payne-homeless-chicago.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

As soon as I read about Candice Payne’s selfless act of kindness, I knew it was the story I wanted to blog about. The heart of this story is what I find the rigorous work of the study of narratives to relinquish in. So many stories are filled with ulterior motives, and sometimes it’s hard to find a story that embraces compassion in ways that our society needs to recognize. I think I’m especially struck by this story because I was just in Chicago over Christmas. Surprisingly, while I was there, the temperatures remained fairly similar to those in Texas. The weather is like this unopposable force that just chooses to strike whenever it deems fit. However, Candice Payne became a protagonist against negative 25 degree weather. She used her credit card to pay for rooms for homeless people to escape the unbearable conditions. Payne clearly isn’t showboating or asking for attention, in fact, she repeatedly implies that this is what any decent human being should be doing to help people. And, she’s right. This nonchalant attitude about doing what is right is what drives the narrative. Our readings for Narrative Theory this week revolve around the themes of timing and space, and how these concepts structure narrative. Timing and setting are integral parts of this very real story. Winter isn’t thought of as dreary and dark in literature, this is a reality that is a direct consequence of the season. Payne encountered all of these characters in her story that she knew needed help. Two of the women that Payne helped were pregnant, and just the idea that the aftermath is new life seems so obnoxiously cliche, but it’s true. Most narratives that move bodies to action involve working through darkness because of the hope of what is to come. The New York times quotes Payne who says: “‘I am a regular person...It all sounded like a rich person did this, but I’m just a little black girl from the South Side. I thought it was unattainable, but after seeing this and seeing people from all around the world, that just tells me that it’s not that unattainable. We can all do this together.’” Payne’s introspection is a narrative all its own. But, these words also suggest that one kind act can spark more. I’m sorry for being cheesy, but Chicago just has the vibrancy that not all cities have and to see it in action is something special. We might want to ask what we can do for our cities, but we know the answers. Every act that we think is small is marking on another person’s narrative in a way that we might not think twice about, but I guarantee that those meaningful words or small gestures meant more to those people than you realize. Narratives are a chain reaction.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Queer Time is Filled With Sewing and Dying

By
“Everyone I knew was dead, dying, or caring for someone who was dying. Our friends died, we made new friends, they died, we made new friends, and they died, and it just went on and on.”  - AIDS Activist Cleve Jones There's this idea that queer folx don't experience time the same way as straight, cis people. In her article " Queer Time: The Alternative to 'Adulting, '"queer novelist and scholar Sarah Jaffe suggested that "Queer lives follow their own temporal logic." As a queer person, I'd have to agree. We've never been given the opportunity to live time like the majority.  How could we when we had to spend so much time sewing quilt squares because we weren't allowed to have funerals? We spent so much time stitching and stitching and stitching our friends' names, our lovers' names, our colleagues' names, and even our own names' into pieces of fabrics.  In 1985, queer activist Cleve Jones came up with ...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Calling, No Problem

By
I have no calling in a world where we all wonder what we're meant to do, who we're supposed to be. My mom called me the other day to tell me one of my childhood friends would be moving to my hometown soon because her husband had accepted a job with the Baptist church next door to her Methodist church. I don’t know why she thinks I give a shit about small town gossip or any news that concerns the church seeing as how she’s very aware of how I feel about organized religion. Nevertheless, she has nothing else to tell me because her world is much smaller than mine. “He used to be an airplane pilot,” she says. “Then why is he going to be a youth minister? How will they survive? Where will the money come from?” I ask, appalled. I know from my instagram that his wife is a stay-at-home mom of three. “It doesn’t matter, they’ll figure it out,” she brushes it off. “He has a calling to work for the Lord.” A calling. A goddamn calling. Half of my life, I waited for some fucking ca...
Post a Comment
Read more

"You don't look like your dad!" Tales of Legal Adoption

By Anonymous
"You don't look like your dad. You must be the spitting image of your mother!" or "Your brothers look just like your dad! I bet you take after your momma." I heard these statements a lot growing up. And it's true. I don't look like my dad. And for a while, I didn't really look like my mom. I do now, but that isn't the point. You see, my dad adopted me when I was around six or seven years old. He had been a part of my life, for, well, all of it. When my mother and biological father (sometimes I refer to him as my sperm donor, because I think it's funny, but his name is Chris), got divorced, my dad, Kenny, married my mom resulting in a blended family of me, who was biologically my mom's, and my two brothers, who were biologically his. Suddenly I went from being the only child to being the middle child in a family dynamic that takes a lot of explaining to do. They say divorce and the things I supposedly went through in my early childhood...
Post a Comment
Read more