A friend once told me, “Wait until you get home to the States and see someone freak out like their whole day is ruined because someone messed up their coffee.”
Only for me to return to the land of the free…
To truly see how privileged and ungrateful we are…
I’m not denying that we all have our scars
The hardships that be
Yet we’re blessed beyond what we ourselves see…
My relatives grew up stereotypically poor
As their physically abusive drunk of a father left them wanting for more
Often abandoning them, and leaving them to live with different relatives
Who really didn’t have two craps to give
And when they had a home, their power would be shut off because they couldn’t pay the bill
Their food was often stale. Their clothes withered and torn
Only to be passed onto the next born
There was so much that could crush one’s will.
They had no gas in their car, and struggled to pay rent
As for an idea of their life cruel
One of them was once beaten because he needed a pencil for school
Yet there’s one message to me that same relative sent:
“We still have it better here than other people in the world. There’s people who are willing to help, and programs to help give us opportunities. There’s people in the world who don’t have that”
And I’ve never forgotten that…
As my own journey has unfurled
I have tasted and seen
Both what he and my other friend mean…
I’ve witnessed people fleeing their homes and pitching up tents
For the bombings refused to relent
My heart was heavy as a boulder
When I saw an elderly woman who was hit by shrapnel, and all of the flesh could be peeled from the back of her shoulder
Yet the doctors turned her away because she wasn’t a serious enough case
The realization of it all… I couldn’t stop the tears down my face
People scrambling to make themselves seem of use, in the hopes we wouldn’t send them back
Playing with kids, who for a little while, got to act like a normal kids
Things that could make anyone’s heart crack:
Mothers overjoyed to just see their kids having fun and full of joy
Fathers thanking you because of the smiles on their wife, girls, and boys
Or having to see the misfortune
Of seeing a child show up without his parents, because now he’s an orphan…
Now let’s move onto a different location…
Different place, different nation…
The capitol of the country is like that of a small city
Compared to our standards it’s almost a pity
You barely have to go just a few miles out
To witness people who are really going without
Living in wooden shacks with dirt floors
Only a cooking pot, and one mattress for a family of ten
But they were so friendly and kind, I would love to go there again
They were incredibly glad
To bend over backwards, offering you anything they had
It seemed so surreal…
Strangers inviting us to their homes and cooking us meals
Like… “I want to bless you, but instead you’ve blessed me!”
And it really began to open my eyes to see just how much of the States is a mess….
How we get hung up on issues so petty…
I watched a beggar with no legs, hopping up and down in a handstand for change…
So to get hung up on issues so small… to me… is kinda deranged…
But again… why don’t you tell me…
What exactly’s wrong with your coffee?