One Book Sacramento Essay Contest
Adult category 2nd place winner:Carrie Sessarego
Sacramento
I have a confession to make. I didn't really like Three Cups of Tea. As I waded through it, bored and exasperated, I had to wonder what my problem was. After all, the book is an enlightening story of commitment and heroism, it provides a fascinating look at a part of the world which is vital to our nation's life and yet almost completely unknown to most of us, and it addresses issues of peace, poverty, education, and female empowerment that are near and dear to my heart. So why did I keep wanting to read something, anything, else?
Upon introspection, I discovered that my chief source of angst lay in my interpretation of the point of the book. Since the entire book is about one person, Greg Mortenson, and he does many pages worth of amazing and wonderful things, I assumed that the message of the book was that we should all be more like Greg Mortenson. The problem is, I found Greg Mortenson, as described by David Oliver Relin, to be an irritating and generally unhappy person. As portrayed in the book, Mr. Mortenson is obsessive, by turns depressive and manic, and, in some ways, remarkably irresponsible. I don't wish we were all more like him, because if many more people were like Greg Mortenson, we would all be running around gibbering like crazed, depressed hamsters. But doesn't that make me complacent and lazy? Shouldn't I want to run out there and spend the remainder of my life sleeping less than five hours a day and traveling constantly to hazardous locations while risking my life to almost single-handedly bring peace to the world? How could I read this book and not take its lesson to heart?
I tried to picture Mr. Mortenson's life without the mission to bring education to Pakistan. Would he be living happily with his wife and children in a nice house, helping people as a nurse while enjoying the outdoors as a hobby? Well, no, probably not. Long before he discovered his life's mission, Mr. Mortenson was rootless, moody, disorganized, and obsessive. In most cases, these are dysfunctional qualities. The real accomplishment of Mr. Mortenson's life isn't that he used his obvious strengths to accomplish amazing things. Greg's heroism and incredible contributions to the world stem from the fact that he seized his quirks and dysfunctions and found an arena in which they could serve as powerful forces for positive change in the world. He steered his tendency towards obsession towards educating children inspite of overwhelming obstacles. His need to travel and tendency towards rootlessness allowed him to serve a distant, almost unreachable population. His inability to keep to a schedule allowed him to function in a culture that does not conform to Western perceptions of time. Above all, his inability, or perhaps just lack of desire, to conform to the expectations of American society allowed him to pursue a goal that was not only glaringly unrealistic, but that guaranteed himself and his family a most unusual life.
Even by turning his disadvantages into strengths, Mr. Mortenson was not successful when he operated alone. He had to find people whose quirks, as well as practical abilities, balanced his own. We don't know much about those quirks, but we can guess. For instance, he found a partner to share his life with who clearly had unusual qualities, including a nature independent and energetic enough to tolerate spending much of each year as a single parent. Mr. Mortenson found a backer whose headstrong and argumentative nature predisposed him to support an idealistic and unreasonable young man. Eventually, Mr. Mortenson found himself with a board of directors. The book doesn't mention much about their personalities, but it's a good bet there were some people in there who cared enough about things like schedules and budgets to keep the agency running in a practical way.
The lesson of Three Cups of Tea is not "Be more like Greg". The lesson is, "Be more like yourself". We all have acknowledged, appreciated strengths and both glaring and hidden weaknesses. Of course we should use our strengths for the betterment of the world, but the greater challenge and reward lies in recognizing the strengths in our weaknesses. Are you so unrelentingly Type-A that you can't go to bed until you have lined up the tassels on your blanket neatly? Then find yourself a messy dreamer with big plans, and organize his or her schedule, office, and finances. Do you feel a compulsive need to argue with everyone about everything? Be a vocal advocate for underserved, under-represented populations in a bureaucratic world. Whatever others find most irritating about you is likely to be your greatest weapon in a battle against forces of ignorance, injustice, and bureaucracy. The world needs quiet, shy introverts who sit alone with their laptops and come up with great ideas they are too withdrawn to express. The world needs pushy, uppity, stubborn loudmouths who won't back down when they know they're right. The world needs people who think outside the box and people who can build a structure in which dreams can become reality. The world needs people who have the blessed ability to repair a sink and the common sense to put "toilet paper" on the school supply shopping list, right after "textbooks and pencils". Don't be ashamed of what you are. Don't be selfish with your talents. Give all your gifts to the world, even the weird, obnoxious ones. In this way, yes, the message of Three Cups of Tea is, "Be like Greg Mortenson".