Dear Spike,
This afternoon I watched a
mother crouch next to her toddler daughter on the side a fetid city street. She
lifted noodles from a small plastic bowl and pushed them into the little girl’s
mouth. The girl — she was three years old, perhaps — was closing her eyes after
each bite in a way that made me think she was savoring her meal. She and her
mother were both smiling and laughing with one another.
Today I am in Phnom Penh,
the capital of Cambodia. This kingdom has an economy that is growing quickly,
but many people are being left behind. There is a lot of poverty here and a lot
of desperation.
I am so fortunate to get to
have these sorts of experiences. When I do, I am reminded that people in places
like this are absolutely no different than you and me. They do not deserve
their poverty any more than we deserve our wealth.
We are so fortunate.
We belong to a small
number of people ever to have lived on this planet who do not have much cause
to worry for their day-to-day safety, or about access to food, or about access
to clean water, or about shelter, or about education.
That is not so say that we
don’t have real problems. It is not to say we cannot have and air grievances.
It is not so say we cannot feel slighted or that we shouldn’t demand change.
But it’s helpful, I think,
to have opportunities like this — to put all of those problems into
perspective.
Certainly, we can be proud
of what our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents did to make this possible
for us. But it behooves us to never forget that all of this happened largely
independent of anything we have done in our own lives. And it is important to
consider, as well, that there is little privilege in this world that wasn’t
built on the exploitation of someone else’s parents, grandparents or
great-grandparents.
Does that make us
obligated in some way to help others who are not so fortunate? I think so, and
I think you will come to think so, too.
How? That is a much harder
and much more complicated question.
But here is a place to
start: Smile more. Laugh more. Savor more. If people in desperate situations
can do these things, we have no excuse not to do so as well.
Love,
dad
