A selfish grain of sand.....

Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

Poverty......I had to look up the definition.
Am I going to hell for admitting that? Heaven's no, I'm going to hell for all those uses of God's name in vain. Now look, I'm not an idiot, I know what poverty is, but when I really thought about it...I mean quelled the inner hamster of my mind, racing in circles, distracted by sitcom laugh tracks, coffee and the looming decision of a Halloween costume, I found myself a little stumped. Muddled.
Where there should have been clarity, meaning my brain, one topic to ponder, clear concise opinions should have made them selves available to me. Instead there was confusion and chaos. It made my head hurt.
Perhaps part of it is that poverty, the very idea of people out there starving and dying from horrible diseases with no place to live, is so hard to believe.
Though I do believe it. I see the commercials. Right between mascara and a wonder drug for your libido you can learn all about saving lives for just pennies a day.
I've also been appalled and horrified by the sight of people sleeping on the side of the road. A handy bush as their roof and a shopping cart apparently the house of all their worldly possessions.
Is that real? That really happens?
I do not believe I'm the only one who feels like their life is cushioned by a fog of surreality when it comes to things like war, natural disasters and poverty. There's even a tiny part of my brain, the part that hides it's face from the idea of death, of scary things that are too big for the mind to grasp like what if there's no God.....or what if there is...? This little part of grey matter tries to argue it.
Sad little portion of the brain that it is, trying to convince me there is no poverty. People can not be homeless. There can not literally be thousands and millions of starving people because if there were we'd fix it.
WE, the rest of us.
US, the un-poverty stricken.
The ones who buy 6 dollar coffee drinks, 50 dollar Wii games and 80 dollar shoes.
WE, the ones who inject poison into our faces to reduce wrinkles, put stripes on our cars, cell phones in every pocket and people in to space....
WE surely would not do any of that if there were starving, dying children in the world...would we?
My brain hurts. I think it hurts the most because I know we do, more so because I do. ME.
The guilt of having credit cards and a fridge full of food and gas in our car and the good kind of cat food for our kitties can weigh pretty heavy on my mind.
Then another layer of guilt handily belly flops down on the first and snarls cruelly at my quivering mind, "You think you feel bad? How about not having any food, how about your family not having any food? No bed to sleep in, no house, no car, no work, bad water.....you cry baby."
So my brain does what any cornered animal does, it goes on the offense.
Billions of dollars in space crap?
Problem solved. Lets funnel it in to all things poverty-wise. Lets not see what Mars rocks look like, lets not give a rat's ass if there's water on other planets and deal with the water on this one...and the fact that some people don't have any that's safe and clean.
See how that worked?
See how I managed to tap into a little righteous anger without doing anything personally myself to help the world?
See how it's not my fault and how I can't really do anything?
See how the few dollars I could spare doesn't make a difference, not when there's such a big need and the space people are blasting millions of dollars up to the moon and beyond?
Pretty clever of my ol' noggin eh?
The brain, it's a beautiful thing...and it's evil.
If it weren't we'd have no issues with poverty. If the area a large group of people lived in was horrible, they'd up and move to a new location. Borders schmorders, we'd welcome them with open arms. (The kind that hug, not the shooting kind.)
Bad brain.
See how it twisted it up again? Yes it would be lovely if the world was all about free love and peace. But it's not. Unless every single person immediately decided to completely alter the way humanity exists....it's not gonna be that.
See how my clever little brain made it about people? Not me...but people. Bad, bad baddddd brain.
There's a part of me that wishes I was strong enough to open my doors and invite any who needs a shelter to come and stay. But I'm not. I am admitting that. I like privacy, I like my life. I love the quality time I have with my husband. I am selfish. Most of us are. Even when we do good things, it's not EVERY thing we could. I see the homeless person on the street but I don't bundle them up into the car and invite them to live with us. I don't move from a house to a one bedroom apartment and donate the difference of rent to a worthy cause. I am selfish.
BUT, tricky, tricky, tricky brain....Oh how you like to twist my thoughts into knots. Large, pulsing, blood red knots that squeeze my insides until I feel I am too exhausted to think any more, and I want to escape into the mindlessness of some frivolous book or tv show.
It whispers how I can't really make a difference with the world. I think that could be true. BUT, you naughty brain there is ONE thing I can change. ONE thing I have control over.
ME!
If I was meant to have power over the actions of everyone. To make great decisions about where people could live, how we would alter the every day runnings of human life to save others, I suspect I'd have that power already....so far this hasn't happened. And yet I have this teeny tiny speck of power, nearly drowned out in the crowd of human life. Power over me.
ONLY me. Each of us has the same speck I think. Power over ourselves. And I can make it so I do not hide from fear. Or escape the responsibility of a wounded world and hurt people by shrugging my shoulders.
Instead of doing nothing, I can do something. I can change me. If I throw dollars at a problem that continues to exists, at least I did something. If I think about a problem and my brain starts a slow leak out of my ears, my eyes cross indefinitely and still I'm no closer to the perfect solution to fix the world.....well...at least I gave it a thought.
And maybe, call me a rose colored glasses, glass half full, pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow kind of person but maybe if I do my little bit.....teeny tiny as it may be....and every one else does there little bit, maybe things will change.
Maybe some day some one in the future will look up the definition of poverty too....but they realllly really won't know what it means.
Because maybe all the itty bitty teeny weeny minuscule things we all do, and keep trying to do, will erode away the insanity of the world. If not in this generation...maybe in the next one...or the next...or the next...or....

Dear great great great great great to the power of 57394757494758495 grandchildren of humanity, I will try and do something, I will be the best little grain of sand I can, even if it makes my brain hurt. Love me.....

p.s. having made a conscious effort to try and find some thing I can do to help, even in my own tiny, grainy sand way, it was as if the universe presented me an opportunity to follow through with my good intentions.
And I did.
And it felt good and bad.
I can admit that throwing a few dollars at a greater problem, POVERTY, knowing that some one out there has had it sooo bad, that even a few dollars can make a difference...it's humbling, scary and heart breaking. But knowing I did something, anything, instead of nothing.......what's that I see? Would that be a tiny spark of hope? A glimmer or a shiny future filled with peace and equality for all?
Damn right it is.