An outsider, an intruder, a giver of charity and nothing more.
In response to the floods here in Indiana, I donated money to the Red Cross. I collected funds at my office. And, just this evening, I assembled my daughter's old bed, clothing, toys, and books to take to a family here that had lost their home in Mooresville. What a good lesson for my daughter to learn. I mapquested the address, made sure I had everything ready to go. So we piled into the car...the kid, the dog, and me. We drove our nice little Subaru down our nice paved highway. And we went.
I'm not sure what I was expecting. My quaint little experience I had played out in my head of "doing good" seemed, once I got there, to be entirely self-absorbed. It was poverty. Many children, many dogs, many lives living in quarters that I have a hard time imagining. The sheer volume of stuff - in the lawn, stacked in the shed, stacked in the house. I am from Colorado, and grew up squarely middle class.
The woman who met me at the door, it was her sister that lost her house in the flood that left her and her 4 kids homeless. There is no media coverage for them. The water, and the cameras, left weeks ago. She was very sweet, and very overwhelmed. Appreciative, but guarded. And I knew why. Who did I think I was, really, using my charity to make myself feel better and "give my daughter a lesson"? I was humbled, but not unpleasantly so. I did not overstay my welcome, and told her thank you for letting us come by.
I had guilt, I suppose, of feeling elitist. I have stated here and elsewhere that the American people are "stupid", wilfully ignorant. To some extent, this is true. But to some extent, it isn't. And nuance is the hallmark of mature thinking.
Tonight, I bear witness to this family, and to the countless others that have been affected by this flooding. By Katrina. By poverty beyond their control or choosing. There is a tactile difference between seeing oppressive poverty on TV and absorbing it with all the senses. I was not there long, and I don't want to make a "big deal" out of my experience. But it affected me tonight. And I share it because tonight, I remember.
A few thoughts:
- It is good to be critical of choices, but equally important to temper that critique with compassion. Empathy for circumstances and situations that I do not, cannot understand.
-The world is not my bubble, and there are vast numbers of survivors out there who care not one iota about what I do here, or elsewhere.
-I get trapped into thinking how close I live to the line. The line between making it, and not. I am not anywhere, at all, near the line. A dose of reality and humility are salves to such thinking.
-Gratitude. It is horrible right now. There are many, many things going wrong in our world. And even in that, there is survival. There is beauty. There is the fact that we, despite all odds, are still here.