It's a Jungle Out There

First, a disclaimer: I never go to Starbucks. Never. I'm a Peet's man, through and through.

Except when I travel, and there are no Peet's in the airport terminals, but plenty of Starbucks, you can bet your life.

So I was surprised to find that, along with my coffee, I got words of wisdom. "The Way I See It," Starbucks calls these quotes. And they are numbered, like Snapple Facts, only longer, because you can print more on the side of a Venti than you can in a little circle under the cap. But same principle. Opportunities to learn abound!

The thing was, I really liked #233, from Maria Fadinian (I think; I had to copy it down and I can't be sure of my own writing any more; I'm a casualty of the computer age; soon I won't be able to spell, a casualty of the texting age...), who was listed as a Geographer, ethnologist, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. This is what she said:

"I used to think that going to the jungle made my life an adventure. However, after years of unusual work in exotic places, I realize that it is not how far off I go or how deep into the forest I walk that gives my life meaning. I see that living life fully is what makes life-- anyone's life, no matter where they do or do not go-- an adventure."

I took this initially as great consolation, simply because I don't go anywhere. I am the least well-travelled person I know. Unless you count the wild places of other people's lives that they have shared with me, or the forest of feelings I am invited to visit. But the many-miled Starbucks user, I am not.

Except on this trip something happened that made me realize how strange a world it is out there. I went with my family to see a professional baseball game, something I hadn't done in years. Things in the ballpark were pretty much as I remember them-- meaning, the home team lost, again. But on the way out, as we made our way to the car through the jungle of disgruntled fans and all-too-eager peddlers of bottled water and soft pretzils, one young African American man was standing in the gate, selling T-shirts. At the top of his lungs, he was shouting what was written on the shirts: "Romo is a Homo!" (Referring of course to the Dallas Cowboys QB...)

Then, when I got home, an email acquaintace sent me a picture, of a man on a motorcycle, stopped in traffic. The back of his shirt read, "Nigger, please!" Then something I couldn't make out...

OK, so I'm a recluse who travels in genteel company when he travels at all. But I have to say, I haven't heard or seen such blatant homophobia and racism in, perhaps, far too long. I'm not so naive as to think that these feelings are no longer out there. But evidently I was something of a babe in the woods to think that people would be more ashamed to express them in public.

I wondered what our Starbucks geographer and ethnologist would make of these places and ethnicities in our own country. Sometimes around the corner can be an unusual and exotic place.

But maybe its up to us all to become "emerging explorers!" Certainly, it is important for me. Because these peoples' prejudices give their lives meaning-- even as I find them appalling. Perhaps the adventure is in this discovery of comparative meanings, of persons and cultures.

As I pursue my own life's adventures, sometimes I can't help feeling dismayed but what I find.