Yesterday while reading the New York Times it suddenly dawned on me what a world of contrasts ours is. There was a photo of a child lying on his side at a Mozambique clinic, and under the photo it said he had malaria. It went on to say that, “In Africe, the disease kills 3,000 children each day.” On the next page was a photo of a fisherman on the Nile in Cairo. Under the photo were the words, “men like him live by their wits and earn a few dollars on a good day.” And there were similar photos. Then I noticed the ads of beautiful products by Prada, Chanel, Mikimoto, Tiffany & Co., Coach, Gucci, etc. next to the photos. At that moment those ads alongside the photos seemed completely inappropriate. But we accept these contrasts. We see them, but we really don’t – except when something nudges us to see beyond the newspaper page.
Many families dine with the TV and its news of homicide, mayhem, war-torn bodies, children with guns. Eating and watching and listening to this must do something to the spirit of the one watching. And so this is the other side of the coin – seeing, but unable to help.
I know I’m not going to Mozambique, or the Nile to see if I can somehow make a change. But then, these kinds of photos continue to remind us of the vast numbers of people in the world who suffer day after day without any hope of change coming any time soon.
In The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, there’s a chapter called Always Do Your Best. Maybe that’s an answer. Wherever we find ourselves, in whatever situation we’re in at the time, if we always do our best we’re contributing to helping the world. And one day, if we find ourselves able to help on a mass scale, we’ll step up and do our best – wherever we are; we do our best.
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