I just finished reading Muhammad by Karen Armstrong (Orion Publishing, 1991) while en route from Dubai to Paris, and a steward on the plane stopped me to see if I liked the book. He was Pakistani and a Muslim and could not say enough about how wonderful he thought her descriptions of the origins of his religion were. He noted that even as a non-Muslim she had captured the essence of Islam.

Last night I pulled a down comforter over me in a five-star Dubai hotel as I sank luxuriously into the 1000 thread sheets and feather-soft mattress. We arrived in Dubai for a one night stopover en route to Paris from Malawi.

I grew up in the 60s in Midwest America. It was a time of change in the U.S. when a new sweep at gender equality crossed our nation. I was a child before the women’s movement and a woman in its aftermath. Women gained many newfound freedoms; but what if I had been born in another era or another country where gender equality is far from a basic human right.

“Our religion is an attitude of mind, not a dogma” said Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman) a member of the Sioux nation born in Minnesota in 1858.

I visited Kibera last week – the largest slum in the world and the center of recent post-election violence in Kenya. We were guests of a not-for-profit organization called Comic Relief (our hosts out of the U.K.) that provide funds for multiple programs around the world to combat poverty with many centered in Africa. With local NGO leaders as our guide (and two soldiers carrying automatic rifles) we walked through a section of Kibera and an adjacent neighborhood slum of Nbuta to visit some families that live there.

I notice elderly people a lot. Maybe it’s because I’ve passed the mid-century mark and know I am moving into the later stages of life or maybe it is because my children have moved out of the house; whatever the reason, elderly people catch my eye. Sometimes they are shrunk within a wheelchair being shuttled by a caregiver in white uniform through a grocery store. Sometimes they are vibrant and laughing and getting a Starbucks coffee in front of me. Sometimes they are dying and the subject of attention of my friends or colleagues as their loved ones’ lives slip away. Sometimes they are walking arm in arm in my neighborhood ‘for exercise’ or on holiday ‘for fun’. I saw Jack LaLanne on television recently celebrating his 95th birthday with 95 push-ups and 95 sit-ups. Sometimes they are sitting alone in a nursing home, sad and suffering, just ‘ready to go’.

In America, individualism (a doctrine that the interests of the individual are ethically paramount) is a driving force, from the basis of the economy to the government. Can this concept of individualism go too far? Perhaps it explains part of why among graduating high school students there is an increasing trend for their number 1 and number 2 goals in life to be ‘rich’ and ‘famous’ (according to a Pew poll).

Sometimes I take myself too seriously. It usually happens when I am to ‘do’ something new in front of other people – like the time I officiated at my friend’s wedding or the time I gave a speech at a large fund-raiser. If it entails ‘performance’ and the surroundings are new, my fear system kicks into high gear and I worry.

I went to a memorial service yesterday for a friend’s mother who died at 99. It was full of some 50+ people who knew this extraordinary woman – an ordinary mom who revealed the extraordinary in everyday life. She started using a computer at 83, fell in love with email and the Internet in her 90s, and spent everyday of her life learning.