My dear friend Alyssa Petersel just published her first book. I am incredibly proud of and inspired by this excellent person, and I want write briefly about knowing her and how she has positively impacted my life.
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I’ve known Alyssa for almost five years now. We met at an orientation in London on our way to New Delhi. We were going to study in India; in Bihar, the poorest state, in Bodhgaya, one of the most important places. It was a semester abroad that turned into a pilgrimage and that shaped the majority of my thoughts and actions that have come since.
I remember first meaningfully speaking with Alyssa on the train ride from New Delhi to Bodhgaya. It was a sixteen hour plunge across the sprawling Gangetic Plain into the complete unknown. I was incredibly skeptical and judgmental in that period of my life. Everyone was always choosing to do something wrong or inaccurately thinking about an issue in some way. I found Alyssa’s positive outlook regarding peoples' potential for self-improvement and compassion, and respectful openness to difference, cloying.
In spite of this, I didn’t find Alyssa to be intolerable and we became friends (if I had possessed a larger degree of self-reflection at this time, I would have recognized which one of us was actually intolerable. Luckily for me, reflection is a pretty big part of meditating everyday for three months, and I have worked to atone for my obnoxious sins). We spent the next few months in a monastery and the positivity continued, even in the face of brutal poverty and misogynistic religious structures.
During our last weeks in Bodhgaya, I helped her edit her final paper on the psychological effects of practicing Buddhism. I kept telling her that her writing was too optimistic and that her ideas weren’t based in evidence. She needed to back up what she was saying with data and concrete information was the best form of knowledge. I think she conceded to some of the changes but kept the message the same; that people are fundamentally good and that they are trying their best to improve. I didn’t understand her points back then, but I think I do now.
I see now that she was saying everyone wants to love and be loved. The world isn’t a Newtonian mechanism or a Manichean duality. There aren’t right and wrong ways of doing things. What people experience matters, and how they frame that experience and imbue it with meaning in their lives is incredibly important on an individual and social level. Groups that create and reinforce identity and belonging in positive ways can create radical impact.
Watching Alyssa write this book reminded me of helping her edit her essay. I was reminded of her inexorable optimism and unlimited drive to help other people. I get caught up in the structural aspects of systemic oppression and the paralyzing contexts of history and politics. Alyssa cuts through this and reminds me that sometimes people just want to tell their story and feel like they belong to something a little bigger then themselves, and this can be incredibly powerful and change-making.
In the end it seems that Alyssa has persevered and slowly eroded my pessimism. She broke me out of a more rigid framework and softened me to new ways of thinking. Watching her write this book gives me so much hope that her ideas and compassion will spread to other people and gently open their minds the way they opened mine. She has enriched my life in so many ways and I hope her message reaches as far as possible. Mazel tov.
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Website: http://www.somehowiamdifferent.com