One Reason to Go

One of the reasons I went to Africa was to escape mediation. I felt that my life, in America, was in real danger of following the edicts of entities beyond me. This went farther than the schemes of marketing, little material seductions, because I felt that everything I experienced (from the subway to the supermarket) was modified or designed before I even got there. I was about to graduate college, so in a way life for 18 years had been defined by an educational system of ‘theory’ that has little to do with surviving in the world. And the next step society pushes new grads into would be a series of desperate internships and simplistic entry-level jobs. I felt the walls closing in on me, and wanted to tear everything apart, to be free, to suffer.

If the idea of ‘mediation’ seems impenetrable or (ironically) contrived, perhaps the scenario in the following entry will help convey the situation...