A lesson

This is a story from back when I was staying at my urban homestay. I'm not going to worry about all that "Update/backdate" labels anymore. The point is that now I understand some things maybe differently than when they happened.

I should have been doing homework. Instead I was lying on my bed, doing nothing. Really nothing special about that. I'd also left the light on, so that I wouldn't feel that I was sleeping, or possibly so that I wouldn't feel like I had to sleep.

Then Alicia came in, and turned off the light.

I wasn't actually sleeping so I got up from the bed and told her that I wasn't sleeping. She said that I shouldn't have the light on if I wasn't sleeping, and that in Mexico, people try not to waste power.

I realized afterwards that I had my values entirely reversed. I was charging my homestay family money just so that I could feel more productive than I actually was. And, to top it all off, I was probably making the air worse too.

I had always considered myself an environmentalist. I have no idea if Alicia considered herself as such. Yet at that moment it scacely mattered what either of us believed that we believed. What mattered was results.