We Are Spoiled People

How must the "other half" of the world think of us? To some, we must seem spoiled darlings with our entertainments and travel and media freedoms and good educations and social care and nice neighbourhoods and cars and jobs and professions. We grouch about a little rain or snow, that our cars are dirty, our house needs paint, that our kids don't have the latest backpack or that the boss yells at us sometimes. We complain about the government taxes while we have paved roads and warm houses and education and a bit of money in the bank. We say our back aches and we'll just go out and buy a new mattress on the weekend if we aren't going up to the cabin.We cluck our tongues about the lawn or the mosquitoes or the dog that barks all night. We get angry when the teacher gives our kid a  well-deserved D or we're told she's a bully and is. When our car breaks down or we need an ambulance or our knee hurts, we call up the doctor's office and insist on an MRI or x-ray and go ballistic when we have to wait in line knowing we will get it. We don't know what it is like to have our son or brother or husband snatched in the middle of night never to be heard of again, and it's the police who do it. We don't know what is rank hunger or having to run with absolutely nothing to safe shelter that isn't really safe. We have no idea what it's like to escape with a sack and only one's life, to another foreign country where the ways are not the same nor the language, knowing that where you run to for help, you aren't wanted there either. But you go anyway out of desperation. You see that they have far more than they need and maybe they will be merciful. We seldom know the fear of being shot or hacked or raped or beaten or tortured in our own place where we have lived for generations. We, here, say how badly we feel about all this, but we don't feel. We can't. What we can do, the least we can do, is think about it once in awhile and make an attempt to consider how it would feel. We can attempt to understand, rather than sneer about other human beings that need everything we have and take for granted, but who just haven't had the luck of being born here or enjoying the amenities of democratic places to live in as we do. We assume schools and paved roads and medical care and food that is readily available, a roof over our heads, clean tap water to drink and a long background of peace that gives us all we are and all we have. It's easy to make pronouncements about "those" people and number how many we "want", but who are we? What are we, here in this comfortable state that we live in? We chide what we have and say it is not enough and snipe when we have to pay the taxes and fees that provide all that we take for granted as our right. What if those rights disappeared? Could we survive what "the other half" does, abide their kind of misery and dashed hopes and destroyed dreams? Our continent hasn't had its communities blasted with air attacks or insurrections or major country political disasters, and I hope we never will. But perhaps sometimes, we must, or should, think how it must feel. We might look around at all of our comforts and then appreciate what we have and never  want to lose and then maybe share some of it. In thought, if nothing else.