Being a member of this world as an American citizen, a daughter, a mother, and a sister gives me a sense of drowning in obligation to serve everyone. I have responsibilities to these roles, some since I was born, so I am constantly questioning myself if I am making the correct choices. Be it from family, friends, school, or coworkers, I am still learning to identify myself to the broader context around me.
My brother, not expected to live past three months old, turns twenty this year. Ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to help people and be in the medical field. Although I love the area of work I chose, it feels like a form of obligation from me because of what I have experienced as a child. My mom was a single mother of three, myself being the oldest and having two sons, one who is disabled. Because my mother was the only parent and working, I had to stand up and take on that mother role to both of my brothers, but mainly to my brother, who is entirely dependent on our care. I needed to be there for my family. At the age of 9, I remember getting myself ready for school, and then getting my brother changed, dressed, fed, and administering his medication safely for the day. After school, I had dinner prepared before my mother coming home. That was and is my job, role, and obligation to my family. I was not given a choice at that moment; I needed to be there for them, and I always will be.
Forced to grow up at an early age, I had to learn how to function as an adult while still trying to figure out who I was. However, I choose not to feel like I lost my childhood time. I look back to those days and believe that what I went through is why I decided to go into the medical field and go back to school to expand my education on it. I am making that choice, and possibly taking a risk, to help the sick, which in turn helps the community. David Foster Wallace in “This Is Water” stated, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day” (9). The unwritten vouches to my patients, their families and loved ones, their health, my family, my son, and society is why I choose to sacrifice my potential health and freedom that come with any of those titles.
One of the greatest titles I have is being a mother. When I get time to sit and self-reflect, I begin to wonder if I am giving everyone else around me enough of myself. I always tell people that my son is my whole world, and he is in my eyes, but I feel a sense of guilt within. He is this amazing, smart, very active six-year-old boy who happens to have a working mother with a busy schedule. I get stuck in my thoughts and start to believe that I am horrible for not being able to provide him with all the attention possible. David Foster Wallace mentions the “matter of arrogance” (2), and I can relate that to how I choose my thoughts about what I think of the time I spend with my son. I believe that my thoughts are entirely accurate about being terrible and not spending enough time with him; I start to dismiss what he could be thinking and his feelings. David Wallace also stated, “Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded” (3). I try to justify not engaging with him 24/7 by doing mini-vacations around the country where it is just him and I, our alone time. In the end, I force myself to understand that he is happy, and I am doing a great job. Of course, I wish it could be all of me. Still, there is another obligation to my responsibility as an American citizen, daughter, sister, and whoever else needs me. There will be a constant battle of what I choose to think I am doing right or wrong and what may be the truth.
Our country demands the most from us. Thinking of COVID-19, the world is held responsible for slowing the spread and doing our duties as citizens to protect others. Let us say I am doing my part and staying home during the stay-at-home order and only going to work every day because I’m in the healthcare field, but some people down the street decide to have a party with one hundred people. Because of that party, my whole town is punished, and now we must suffer more because of one other person’s choice. I ultimately draw the line towards my responsibility to our country and the world when we are grouped together and not recognized as unique human beings who make our own choices, whether it be good or bad. The world demands and expects us to fix things that I would argue I am not responsible for. I can care about another American citizen, but not have to feel obligated to them, and that is my right and choice. The world and everyone who runs it should not make us take extra responsibility onto our already full plate. Although I feel obligated to obey the laws, pay my taxes, recycle, and help whenever I can, I also believe those ethics and morals are right to live by regardless.
There is an abundant amount of people who say that we are, in fact, responsible to the world community. Their reasons may be that we are members of the world together, and we owe something of ourselves to pay that debt of membership as if this were like a gym of some sort. These people might also say that if we were collectively given more obligations to and held more accountable by global tribunals, we could achieve utopia. Forcing myself not to be self-centered and choose the way I think, I could agree to some of the arguments. Nonetheless, if we are held more responsible to our children and their future, the elders because of their insightful wisdom, the man on the street who may need psychiatric help, and to be shown that there is someone out there that cares about his life; then perhaps the trickle down effect will be good for the country and the world. Wallace says, “if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently” (7). I want to think that by choosing to work on how to pay more attention to these current world problems, I would be helping a person I have never seen before, nor probably ever will. Although I may choose to think differently at times about my responsibility to the world, I will always go by what I decide my obligations are and to whom.
With the many roles and responsibilities, obligations to others, the effect of my choices, the reality of this all may be that I will always feel I’m drowning, even when I feel like I’m balancing it all well. I want to choose to think differently and push myself outside of my comfort zone and not be a slave to my mind. If I practice a different outlook of my many obligations to the world and everyone who encompasses it, then the reality that I make inside my mind will eventually manifest itself to a beautiful, new beginning always looking for the light, like a sunflower.