I
want you to take a moment to consider a dollar amount. I want you to
stop yourself and think about what this amount could and does mean to
you. The amount I want you to consider is $2,000. What would you do
with $2,000?
It's less than our mortgage payment, taxes
included. It would buy five of the classes I teach. It would buy two
pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes, maybe three. It's more than the
monthly amount earned for a family of four
living above the poverty line in the United States. It's more than the
monthly salary a new teacher received in Montana in 2002-2003.
Here's the really astounding part: With $2,000, you could change the lives of thousands of people in Africa, South America, Central America and Asia by building potable water wells. Through organizations like The Water Project
you could literally provide safe drinking water, therefore less
disease, therefore less death, for thousands of people. According to
the strictest numbers, you could give 100 people access to potable
water for 15 years. What happens if we change it a bit and say that the
$2,000 is a monthly expenditure? it adds up to 12,000 people a year,
each continuing for 15 years. As that number grows, the ripples would
be astounding. It would take very little time for the number to have
rippled into the millions, perhaps even billions. All from $2,000,
initially and $24,000 annually. Imagine the ripples you could create
with that amount of money. Imagine.
Did you know that over 27,000,000 people are enslaved in the world today? Did you also know that the number of people enslaved on the earth today is largerthan it has ever been?
Not all slaves are children, but the majority seem to be since children
are unable to care for themselves. There are sex slaves and there are
workers slaves, though the two are often combined. One thing all
enslaved people have in common is their vulnerability to forces that
seek to profit from their degradation. Yet, you could buy 40 enslaved
children in Haiti with $2,000. That equals 480 children a year you
could liberate from a life of rape, work, disease, and malnutrition. Children. Imagine the childhood you could restore with that gift. Imagine.
Have you considered what $2,000 means to you?
This
is what it means to me: Between my insurance company and my copays, we
pay $2000 a month on prescriptions for me. That's $24,000 a year. Three
fourths of that amount is spent on one medication. It happens to be the one that keeps me alive, but it is only 90 mg a month of fluid. That's 0.003174656575462237 of an ounce. Let's say you wanted to spend that amount on Chanel No. 5 perfume, instead: you could buy 5 ounces of it with $2,000. That's just short of half a can of Coke! (I may be really off in my calculations. I am, ahem, not that good at that math stuff.) Admittedly,
I don't know how drug prices are calculated and where the true cost
lies, but I do know that there are reasons why some drugs remain
exorbitant and others do not: demand. My example is perhaps not the
best example because the drug I take is very rarely used and the
problem I take it for is rarer, still. However, it is an indication of
what it means to live the life of a woman in the United States with the
benefit of medical insurance. Honestly, it seems... distorted, bloated
and not at all based in the reality faced by most people in the world.
I simply would not have survived as long as I have if I had been born
in a third world country, or in this country without health insurance.
I, like you, am literally measured by the amount I can pay for the care
I receive.
I am left, finally, to ask: why do I deserve to live when others do not?
It
must truly be admitted that if we do not see our actions as purposeful
and meaningful to others as much as they are to ourselves, we lose all
perspective and all consciousness in the idea of otherness and individuality.
If we do not acknowledge our place in the system of poverty, hatred,
and a valueless driven life, we do not acknowledge our place on the
earth. It isn't enough for us to shake our heads in disgust at what
others do to cause suffering; how can it be? Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Yes! Act only in a way that you consciously choose to make true and real.
Act only in a way that does not allow for slavery in your name or in
the name of your lower price, your freer choice. It must be so. That is
the only way to be worthy of the lives we are privileged to lead. You
choose! You decide! You act in a way that is conscious of others!
Now ask yourself: Do you deserve your
life? Does your life, in all of its daily functions, its lesser and its
greater moments, cause or alleviate suffering? It is not enough to
allow others to do the work for us; to acknowledge that the
organizations who fight these things exist and are therefore acting in
our stead. It cannot be enough when the problem exists at all. It's
easy enough to understand that if we support companies who employ slave
labor then we support slavery. When we grab a Hershey's bar
at the convenience store or a Reese's peanut butter cup out of the
vending machine, we are eating off of the backs of slaves. We endorse
the idea that cheap chocolate is a better outcome for all of us
than paying more for chocolate, or anything else. We decide that our
palates, our taste buds, are more important than the suffering of
others. How can this be? How have we gotten here so willfully and yet
so ignorantly?
Priorities.
We'd rather have 500 channels
of satellite TV than use that money to fight rampant slavery. We'd
rather have 30 pairs of shoes than spend that money to build wells for
people who get their water from a swamp. We'd rather have a perfectly manicured lawn than spend that money on education, in our own damn country!
We'd rather shop at Walmart than spend more to shop at Costco, where
employees are treated like human beings worthy of respect and the
bottom line is, amazingly, secondary to the health of the company and
employees themselves. We'd rather we didn't have to think about how the
cocoa for our cheap chocolate bar was obtained. We'd rather
unthinkingly go through life allowing others to do the moral heavy
lifting for us.
We don't
want to bother. And the sad part is: we don't have to be bothered. We
can continue to go about our lives as if nothing we do truly matters to
anyone but us and ours. That absence of conflict in our lives has been
brought to us by the people who do stand up and fight for the rights of
others. Those people are the ones who have given you the choice to be
oblivious, the choice to be selfish.
Do you deserve it? No. There is no such thing as a deserving selfish
act because there is no such thing as an act that exists on its own.
Whether you choose to use more water to keep your non-native grass
alive than a person in Africa uses all year,
or whether you choose to live as well as you can but only insofar as it
doesn't inconvenience you, you are choosing to act in a way that has
consequences to others. All others. The only truly selfish act you are
allowed is the act of existence; everything else is a gift. Be
sentimental: treasure it.
For, we are the makers of ripples.
Picture credit
