You can never go home again

On my way home from Nepal last week I had a nine hour lay over in San Francisco. My original plan was just to wait in the airport for the whole time but after trying to pass the first hour I decided to venture into the city via the BART transit system. After spending about half an hour try to navigate the subway system I found my self sitting in a park in downtown San Fran. As I sat there watching the people go about there business I thought to myself, “I wonder how many of these people know what’s going on outside their boarders?” I wondered if there was a feeling on the streets that this place was not the center of the universe or if they still believed that America was above all else.

Its funny coming back to North America after being in a third world country, life is so orderly here there are rules governing everything we do and we have a procedure to fallow for every circumstance. It feels like we have tried to create this utopia to protect ourselves from the bad things in life, the injustices of the world. In doing this however a terrible thing has happened; whether by accident or on purpose we have forgotten about the undeveloped world. We as a culture have shut ourselves of to injustice because we like to think that everything is fine, we like to chase after the things that our culture tells us are important and forget that for some people chasing after food is all they have time to do. Don’t get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with nice things. I myself like to have a nice place to live and nice stuff to do the things I like to do. My point is this; have we striven so hard to achieve these things that we have forsaken those not fortunate enough to be born in the western world?

Personally if I think of this question and if I am truthful with myself I would say that I have forgone being generous so that I can get the things I want like new climbing gear or a new jacket. I like nice things but I think there is something really wrong with our mindset if we put those nice things above helping those in need. I herd a statistic the other day that last year North Americans spent 600 BILLION dollars on Christmas expenditures, even if this number is exaggerated just think of how many people could be fed with just a fraction of that money . I think next year I will give up my presents and give that money to the people who go hungry every day.