i like to think of myself as an optimistic person. i think most of you out there reading who know me well would agree, or at least i'd like to think so ;) it is not in my nature to want to find negativity in things but for some reason the recent earthquake in haiti has me shaking my head at the world around me. i do realize that haiti has little or nothing to do with anything japanese but this is after all my blog and it is on my mind so im going to write about it. if you dont want to read about it, dont. this is your warning if you dont want to hear about something that could be controversial stop reading now. in a lot of ways i feel like i shouldnt even be writing about this at all, but that is why i suppose i am. just airing the ideas in my head.
now i do not claim to be anything of an expert on the subject of haiti or world relations or even the proper responses to natural disasters, but i know that all of these things are on my mind and many other peoples minds now. a fairly natural response at this stage is to feel empathy for those who have lost loved ones and their homes and what few belongings they had in haiti, it is also natural i think to feel sadness at thinking of being in that same situation and our humankindness is set in motion. this is great, it may motivate us to give to charitable work that is happening there. this is great too, i think giving is part of us being world citizens and this is a wonderful thing. the people of haiti are very, very bad off at this point. this is a fact. but what is also a fact is that days, weeks, months and many, many years before this disaster struck their homes they were very, very bad off as well. haitian culture has a long history of slavery that it still practices. people live on little or nothing, have little or nothing and adjust to lives where suffering is the only thing that they can depend on being constant in their lives. these people for the most part are living lives that you and i shudder to even think about and shield our eyes from viewing when their truths are spewed on our tv screens. the suffering that those people are feeling there is hardly new to them.
how is it then that we should all be so worried about them now? where were we with our pocketbooks and warm hearts for the last who-even-knows how many years? why does it take something really horrific happening for us to focus our attention on those in need in this world? it feels so strange to me that it takes disasters for us to come together as a world community. what is holding us back from responding to each other like this on a regular basis? what is holding us back from keeping up on the quality of life being lived by our brothers and sisters who live in every corner of the world on a regular basis? i can guarantee that there are thousands of other people in the world who are experiencing agony as those in haiti are now, but they dont have news crews there to show the rest of us what is going on. dont they count? why arent we rushing to their aid too?
many of you know sam, my dear friend who is working now as a peace corps volunteer in the dominican republic. i have her to thank for a lot of the information that i do have on how the people of hispanola are living. its bad news, that is why she is there. she sent an email out (which was a sort of miracle that she could even get a connection that worked) a few days after the disaster letting all of us who love her know that she was okay. she also told us about the state of things post-disaster are looking like. there is no censor on the island television there that prevents the camera crews from filming the dead bodies everywhere and then broadcasting them to the public. they get to see what is really going on there, they dont get a sheltered version because it is too gorey. i cant even imagine.
i know im ranting a bit here but as i said before, it is just something that i feel that the whole world is paying attention to right now and the fact is, i dont have anyone to discuss it with. actually i have yet to talk to anyone on the island who even knows what happened, so maybe it is the world minus my island in japan. i applaud anyone who has taken action to help those in need now in haiti, but i challenge anyone who reads this to think about what you can do as a global citizen to help those living in misery on a regular basis. it should not take a catastrophe to bring us together. shouldnt we feel this compassion daily and reach out whenever we can, not just when it is in our faces? part of finding a solution is simply becoming aware and educating ourselves about the state of the world around us. this means getting uncomfortable and daring to dig into unsightly lives of those who live oceans away and stepping outside of our comfy little cocoons. i cannot claim to be aware of all of the suffering that is going on in the world. i do know that i want to push myself to be more aware of it all the time and to remember how lucky i am and to do what i can with my good fortune in life to help or bring awareness to those in need regularly. caring for a moment is nice but it will never be enough to fix the lives of people like those in haiti. it will take the world's populations making a habit of compassion and caring.
i have attached a link here of something im sure many of you have heard or read before. it is lesson that i taught to my senior high students this past week and will continue to talk with them about. it was extremely moving to share some of these figures with them and watch as they realized how lucky they were to be a part of the richest and most well off demographic in the world.
today i will meditate on the thought of global citizenship and what it means for me and all of us. i will do this knowing that i am not alone and that many of you reading already share this meditation with me.
namaste friends
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