In which my idealism takes a hit

I'm antsy.  Antsy like I can't keep my arms still when I talk and when I don't.  Antsy like I'm waiting for my hair to grow out and it's just not growing.  Antsy like I'm suspended between two intakes of breath, and the slow exhale in between is taking far too long.  Antsy like I'm far too nervous for what is waiting for me at home.  Antsy like my faith in seemingly infallible facets of the world has taken a hit in recent months.

There is too much brokenness here, and it breaks down my naive idealism bit by bit.  There is not enough water and not enough money and not enough food and too many people who need those things.  There are not enough resources to fix things in an important, permanent way, and too much need for things to be fixed.

street flags in Ruwad in East Amman

Aseel is an 8-year-old girl who goes to the school in the refugee camp I volunteer at every Thursday.  She wants to write poems about Palestine.  She wants to be a journalist when she grows up.  Sahaafaa.  That's journalism in Arabic.  It was one of the first words I learned.

And it's hearbreaking that I can go back to Alaska and get my degree in journalism, but Aseel will probably live in Al Baqa'a for the rest of her life.  She will probably get married young, and tell her children the stories that her parents told her about a homeland they will probably never know.

How, how, how can we live in a world where this is possible?  How?  How can there be 8-year-old girls who will grow up in refugee camps and never get to leave?  How is that outside of her neighbors, no one will know her story?  How are there fathers that eat every other day so that their kids can eat?  How is that foreign aid comes with so many strings attached and it doesn't always get to the people that need it most?  How is it that two guys can sit in a room and draw lines on a map that divide families into countries?  How does the world run on corrupted politics when those politics affect millions of people?  How am I supposed to just go home in three weeks?

I have no answers, whatsoever.