Getting Off Our Too Beaten Path
The wool we pull over our own eyes - thinking we know others but never living like others with no way back.
It’s amazing what you can eat (believe) if you’ve never seen how the sausage is made…
I truly believe that a lot of the “wrong” in this world (you name it) is due to false empathy or no empathy at all. Not thinking of how our actions effect others, the wider world of people and things out there.
I’ve had the fortune to travel and live in a lot of different places. Didn’t really plan it but something in my soul just made it happen. Like when you are drowning in water, you’ll naturally try to get to the top and gulp some air. One thing I’ve always prioritized during my travels is getting off the beaten path. You’d be so surprised how the majority live in the margins of the life we imagine - and you’ll be enriched in understanding and empathy - finding out about how others live.
Here where I live, the majority live dirt happy poor. Truly. Forgotten by those with money and those driving the big Hilux and eating in restaurants. And it is the same, the world over. Billions living differently, mostly poorly - a part and at home in this world while the rest so modern, shuffle around with their heads cut off, creating havoc, death, and destruction.
Every day, people come to my door knocking. For food, money, anything, old clothes, whatever I hand over to them. And they are so grateful, even if just a half loaf of bread or some leftover pizza. I used to think people came to me because I’m “the gringo” and maybe there is a little of that. But mostly, like anyone, it is because I give them something.
I think the world would be so much better if people truly experienced how those less fortunate lived. I do. Call me naive, so be it. Watching it on Youtube doesn’t cut it. Reading about it or knowing someone or donating somewhere, doesn’t cut it. You got to move, go there, be there. Feel, taste, love, see, be IT.
And not just with a parachute. Fully in. It’s not a visit to Disneyland and then after a week, back home to the comfort of your Netflix and nutella. No. It should be all in. Being there. Truly, Completely. That’s where the empathy will start to kick in and grow and be real.
The world seems to be awash with problems. “Seems” is the operational word. How differently we’d see these problems if we truly experienced life of the other 3/4s. Instead, we cling to our things and cry like a babe if we lose our watch.
We are all so lost in the western world. We don’t really see the world as it is. We are blind.
Who has been to a chicken farm and lived there and seen how that food gets to our tables and fast food joints?
Who has had tea with the workers in China pounding out small pieces of the computers we’ve shipped there as garbage?
Who has lived or spent a night in a house with a dirt floor, water running through the middle of it as the rain pounds against its tin roof?
Who has shot and killed and bled and gutted and skinned the food on their table. Or grown it, picked it, even peeled it?
Who has visited and lived among the piles of our $20 t-shirts that end up on forgotten streets and on the bodies of so many forsaken?
Which of us wolves have lain with the lamb and refused the violence of the world that we support through our day-to-day?
We need better education. Not facts, figures, numbers, skills. No, an education built from experiencing the world out there - bringing it into our heart and not using it as an amusement park. Let’s walk in another’s shoes. Let’s not try to be our brother’s keeper but be our brother’s keeper. It’s our trying that gets in the way.
Everyone Should Dig A Grave
Choose a spot, break the earth
dig and dig and dig
jump in
dig and dig and dig
cold splashes on the face
bailing water
from the always giving, taking earth.
Everyone should have to dig a grave.
Then, feeling the arms light,
hear the smuck
as the body lands and settles,
seeing how the first shovel-full
lands and
illuminates the face
for a moment,
though the earth abideth forever.
Everyone should have to dig a grave.
Digging, digging, digging
then, a few stones on top
a few quiet thoughts and
the wiping of the brow,
the sun on the damp soil
finally, the back turned.
Everyone should have to dig a grave.
The day is coming
when this will be deemed a talent.