An invisible hand?

As I type up my thoughts this evening, I’m listening to the final perfection of the evolution of music. I didn’t plan for that, in fact, I didn’t bring any music over with me. On purpose anyway. The way it ended up with me is kind of an amazing story, howbeit a simple one. It all started last August when I was preparing to move down to Cedar City to attend George Wythe College. I needed a laptop, preferably a cheap one. Thankfully, some one invented Ebay, and I was able to find something that fit my needs and my pocketbook. I purchased it about a week before I moved; as such, I had it mailed directly to my Cedar City address. It arrived, and I learned why it was so cheap; it had everything, except a cd drive. Until that moment, I didn’t even know that they made laptops like mine. It did however have a USB port and I had a flash drive. I transferred my music to my flash and thence to my laptop. It worked perfectly. I then forgot completely about the music on my flash drive until it was plugged into our laptop here and began playing music. And Africa, which was already awesome, became better as the air was filled with the sweet strains of country music. The failure of a certain Ebay member to mention that the laptop they were selling was missing a vital part of its anatomy put events in motion that enabled me to have country music in Africa. Coincidence? Maybe. Except I don’t believe in coincidence.
On Saturday I taught a class to roughly forty African high-schoolers. It was kind of spur of the moment; we were supposed to be doing the second day of a two day program with about forty other African high-schoolers. They were, however, taking an exam, so the school administration gave us new kids. We ended up playing hangman, finally coming to the word leader. What, and more importantly, who is a leader, I asked them. They started with the obvious, government leaders. By the time they left, they had the beginnings of a slightly different perspective: they were leaders; leaders of their own lives today and of society tomorrow. The future movers and shakers of Africa were sitting in that dirty, rundown schoolroom with me. All it takes is their choice.
Tuesday I met individually with one of my students, something we do regularly, just to know if we can do anything to help mentor them more effectively. He expressed two things to me. “Ben,” he said, “I feel the need to take what I have learned here and teach it in my home. We have many schools and churches there, and they don’t know about leadership education, and they need to. I don’t know how I’m going do it, where I’m going to get the money to go over there. But I know I need to, and I will do it. Somehow.” Not content with simply knowing himself, he needed to share what he had learned, how he had changed. I know the feeling; it burns inside of me. But he had another dream, “I used to write, articles, papers, actually I started a novel. I would like to finish. Can we work on my writing? I would like that actually.” This is where I find out whether or not I learned anything at college. For the sake of my students I sure hope I did.
How did I end up here? It’s a question I ask myself often. A white boy from Wyoming teaching leadership classes to Ugandan high-schoolers and mentoring a teacher in his writing. Random. Even more than the circumstances that led to my having music during my stay here. Over a year and a half ago a teacher at Northwest wrote on a paper of mine, “Ben, you should join forensics. Talk to me.” Before that, I would never have been able to stand in front of anyone and teach anything. Six months later another man said something that altered the course of my life again, “Ben, money should never be the reason you don’t do something you believe is right.” And before I knew it I found myself accepted to George Wythe College and preparing to move to Cedar City (which, incidentally precipitated my buying a laptop, which is why I’m listening to country music right now). Coincidence? Don’t believe in them. Adam Smith said that there was an invisible hand guiding economics. Maybe that invisible hand is really guiding our lives.
So Africa is good. Life is good. God is good. Chipates are dang good. You all should come over and try some. Till then, take care all.