Pain
I live in a world whose children go to bed hungry and thirsty. Where people live without health insurance live adequately. I live in a world of violence. I live in a world whose corporations do not think twice about outsourcing jobs to third world countries whose people live far below our standard of living. I live in a world where every 2.5 minutes, someone is sexually assaulted. I live in a world where I see women; beautiful, strong, graceful women, whose hope has been torn from them by the violent act of someone who took their very livelihood through the act that should be the most intimate and precious one we ever take part in. I live in a world where people suffer from cancer and multiple schlerosis and whose babies are born premature. I live in a world whose homeless are faceless, and whose homosexual population is degraded. I live in a world where sex trafficking is a billion dollar industry, and where people still live as SLAVES.
Yet I live in this world, and the cost of my living could pay for dozens of wells in African nations, (providing clean, safe, water. LIFE! )Where the things that I buy support those corporations. Where the stores that I go to do not provide adequate health insurance for their employees. I live in a privileged world.
I hurt. I hurt for the privilege that I maintain, despite the hungry, hopeless, homeless, overworked, & sick. I fail to recognize their lives with my purchases and with my activism. My world is far too priveleged. Yet given the choice, yes, I would stay on this side. The classes and experience that this overpriced education have given me enlighten me to the pain I should be experiencing every day. On behalf of those hurting individuals.
What right do I, who drives a working car and eats well, and sleeps in a warm bed in a stable home, have to complain? WHAT RIGHT do we have to say one negative thing about the way we live?
It's all too much, I think sometimes. I may as well give up, return to my ignorance, and live my life of safety with no thought to those that are hurting. But DAMN. Damn. I live in a world that values status, that values money, that values thing that don't mean a damn thing on the other side of this world.
It's all too much. I'm ashamed at my ignorance. I'm ashamed that I stand by and let these things happen, that I don't involve myself enough or speak out enough or hold up my candle at the vigils ENOUGH. I am but one voice, and the passion overtakes me at times. I can't just pick one issue, and every issue, it seems, makes my heart hurt.
But I live in this world. DAMN.
"Those who sit around and wait don't leave lasting legacies. Those who stand up and make something happen do."
