India - Out of sight is out of mind

This post has existed in several versions/forms over the past several months. It attempts to capture what I've learned from India, and at some level, have always felt. This is important to me... If you don't have 10 minutes to spare, read until the end of the paragraph, it's kind of a dry, soul-less "thesis" statement, and doesn't actually capture much of what is written (it probably captures the 'preachy' tone). Thank you Tara, for editing. And Thank you Tara's family, for being unbelieveably welcoming and for pushing me past the easy stereotypes... The benefits of globalization for the wealthy (the wealthy being you, me and almost everyone we know) should come with an increased awareness of the globe. The awareness is good enough. Awareness leads to words and action, which are intentional or unintentional results.

When the Spirit of Christmas Present tells Ebeneezer Scrooge that Little Timmy doesn't have much time left, Scrooge breaks down and cries. I watch this from my comfortable leather, reclining, movie-theatre seat, and from behind my 3-D glasses, I start crying. Crying is an understatement; I start bawling under the suffocating weight of comprehension.

In the cemetery just north of Jean-Talon in Montreal, an area of land is marked by tombstones of a different form. Cemeteries are grim enough, but this section is haunting. The little graves here are designated by cut-down trees, carved into stone. They are marked by potentiality--stopped.

A tree can grow almost infinitely until it is intentionally or unintentionally prevented from achieving that potential. In our era, the damage is most often caused by us. The same is true for the tree's metaphorical sibling, Little Timmy.

Something affects us deeply when potentiality is broken. What is it about the innocence of children that marks us so profoundly? Children seem to awaken somehow, in even the most jaded or hardened of men, intense feelings of sympathy and even compassion. We weep when we see a child suffering; an adult with skin cancer is bad, a child with leukemia is worse.

 ...

A boy and a girl are enjoying a romantic moment while looking out at the Gateway to India and the moonlit harbor behind it. The air is warm and there is a light breeze. They are talking about frivolous things, and he is cracking jokes that only in a slight state of inebriation would result in shared giggles. The moment is perfect, there is even some music coming from somewhere...

...and then a frail-looking elderly woman comes by, begging for change. And all of a sudden, the frivolities and flirtation get swallowed whole by political discourse. The moment is lost. The moment is not lost, it is confronted with reality, and in confrontation with reality, becomes something more than a cliche; in the instant where cruelty and bliss confront each other, they come together to grasp at an ultimate reality. A good artist can paint pretty flowers and make them look beautiful. A great artist can paint a rotting corpse, and turn it into something beautiful. The rose is infinitely more beautiful when it grows from a garbage heap than when it grows among 1000 other roses. The divine does not arise from ignoring the unpleasant, but from embracing it...

When traveling through Goa on my quest to find the ancestors of a friend, I accidentally landed at the El-Shaddai Victory House. By 'chance', I ended up in a place that responds to the constant anguish of childrens' suffering in India. By 'chance', I found an answer to the torment of seeing children begging on the street for whom I can never do anything for. Here, malnourished and abused children are rescued, given food, a home, and most importantly, an education that removes them from the cycle of extreme poverty. Every life is a nation, and The El Shaddai Charitable Trust seeks to save the world, one nation at a time. For around 35$ a month, or a bit more than a dollar a day, a child is rescued. Crazy, right? A whole life, changed, for the equivalent of getting a spring roll on top of a meal. A child will not die, because a person somewhere in the Western world decided that today, she or he won't buy a chocolate bar. Imagine what could happen if we took our 10% savings rule, and took off 1%, and sent it to El Shaddai; how many lives would that change? How much suffering would that dispense of? How many trees get to grow big and tall, and maybe even a little bit fat?

"Our most holy book is our chequebook" says Rabbi Lerner in what might have been the most controversial Yom Kippur sermon in the history of Yom Kippur sermons. What is implied in that statement is that we tend, in the current era, to place our personal values around our own dollar value. When considering multiple options, rather than looking at the cost of the time something takes, or the environmental result, or whatever other framework of reference we could examine from, we tend to look solely at the monetary cost.

Brad: Man, I could get a 3-year Masters degree in Tibetan studies for 3000$. Holy crap!

Julien: That is really cheap. But is it worth the time that might've been spent doing something else?

Money and consciousness are intertwined, so that if our money goes in a certain direction, our consciousness should theoretically follow. Giving money to a charity doesn't just help others, it keeps us aware EVERY time we get our bank statement and bemoan our expenses. We all need a little reminder from time to time. In the moment when I'm sitting in my room and reading the India GQ Luxury Edition, the suffering of the outside world dissapears; something needs to remind me that just on the other side of my door, just on the other side of my consciousness, there is suffering. Maybe my bank balance is the place where the reminder should come from (or maybe not?). From awareness of reality, of all aspects of reality (and not just the pleasant ones), I can help children grow to be adults. I can engage in battle against the cruelty of the world. I can gain a greater understanding of 'ultimate reality', if such a thing exists. At the very least, I can feel good about myself about having done SOMETHING to improve the lot of a person who is less lucky than me... To be clear, I'm NOT saying "Give a dollar a day, or else you're a bad person". I am saying "Keep in mind the suffering of others, because they are as much a part of our own existence as taking a bite from a sandwich". 

But we don't want to keep them in mind; we avoid, we pretend it's not happening... Wealth buys us the ability to ignore the cruelties of existence. From behind our gates (or ports), we don't have to notice the impoverished person's expression as we toss out our slightly stale chips. I am just beginning to understand the cruelty behind the sentence "Out of sight is out of mind". In our world, rejoicing is done in public, suffering is done in private.

"Finish your meal. In Africa, children would love to have that much food!" In India, I can't eat ice cream. It has nothing to do with the quality of ice cream or the fact that it melts so damned fast... When I buy a cone, and walk down the street, merrily licking away, I start noticing child after child after child. They are on the street, begging, playing in the same dirt and garbage that I feel uncomfortable walking on, underfed and sick. A song comes into my head "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream". I look at them and my ice cream morphs into a symbol of my gluttony...

A recent study has shown that more than 35% of food is wasted in the U.S.

What differentiates "me" from the starving child begging in the street? Fundamentally nothing. I was, by 'chance', born to near-perfect circumstances. "They", by 'chance', may never live to see past the age of 5 (the statistics are heavily weighted against them). Life is too short, but for some, it is infinitely shorter.

...

"Put your mouth where your money is." If we spend our money on a car that destroys the environment, even if we understand climate change, we will put the responsibility of fixing the problem somewhere else (cars make up an extremely small proportion of the Co2 that leads to climate change). If we buy a hybrid, or ride a bicycle, our outlook changes. If we want to buy a hybrid, but can't, we will tend to drive less as we await better options. Thoughts, Words, and Actions, are of equal and co-dependent value. The much Oprah-touted book "The Secret", along with the Buddhist religion, attest to that.

Saying is Doing. Who knows that better than Stephen Harper who famously stated "Quebec is a nation within a nation" and in so-saying (and not doing anything), partially diffused tensions that stretch back decades. Who knows better than me or you? Anyone who has ever had to deal with a break-up/separation/divorce knows the potency of words. In the same vein, Thoughts and Intentions carry great weight. Who has a better night out: the person who, while getting ready, thinks "Tonight is going to suck", or the person who thinks the opposite? As a result, which one of the two partyers facilitates a good night for others?

 ...

Scrooge's nose is ridiculously long (he must be a distant cousin of mine), and yet, he is unable to see past it. As a consequence or by-product of Scrooge's narrow sight, Little Timmy will die. In a moment though, Scrooge's vision expands as a result of exposure to a distanced view of his own life; he comes to examine the eternal question "What is the self?", and discovers the ephemeral nature of human existence (in the form of his own tombstone).
WE ALL DIE!
Through that epiphanous moment, the very wealthy Scrooge decides to become generous and charitable, and even to spend time with a suffering child and, what happens? Little Timmy lives to fulfill his potential.

In reality, today's Little Timmy will die, whether we come to a realization or not. However, the potential for tomorrow's Little Timmy to survive is real, if we change our Scrooge-like mentalities and look beyond the tips of our farcically huge noses. [The cruelties of existence are so perverse that they can often only be regarded through farce.] Misery still exists whether we see it or not, but under which circumstance are we better off?

"Only a life lived for others is a life worth while" - Albert Einstein