What we've made convenient...

I was thinking yesterday about human suffering and also what it means to be human. They say that the greatest and worst experiences of our lives are what really shape us into who we really are. Sometimes those experiences come hand in hand. But when I was thinking about human suffering, probably us white, middle-class folks have it the best. Our suffering consists of dying grandparents or the weight of finals week. This might sound a little heartless, but even the worst of our suffering (an alcoholic parent, physical or sexual abuse, etc.), doesn't seem to compare in my eyes with the suffering of the third world.

Conveniently, we have defined (WE as in the Western, developed world) human and what "real life" is to traveling, education, having people skills, and an occasional spiritual experience. If we can speak, if we are literate, if we have seen other parts of the world, if we have incurred on some magical "other" existence, if we have been to college, if we "know our stuff", then, and only then are we truly human. Right???

Well, I'm not thinking that's particularly true... And worst of all, it devalues the worth of the majority of all the other human beings on this beautiful planet. What if everything we thought was true was completely wrong? Like what if we have placed education on a pedestal so high that we are completely blind to "real life", that is if real life was only seen by the eyes of the suffering. We conveniently assume that if "they" don't have running water, or if they have AIDS, or if they've never been to school that they are less than human. When the reality is that in all the time we've spent going to the lake and playing scrabble, these people have been searching for food and praying for clean water.

I have never experienced the death of a parent, the lack of a parent, starvation, disease, genocide, ethnic cleansing, lack of education, homelessness, etc... I mean the list could go on and on. But I guarantee that if I had experienced any of those terrible things, I would have a much different picture of the world and what true life really is.

I don't know. All I'm saying is that we've made a very convenient definition of life and what it means to be human, that all we've done is spit in the faces of those whose lives look nothing like ours.

It's at least something to ponder...

Lacy