Everyday Acts

It’s easy to change the world, for the better, if you want to.

I’m not talking about creating a permanent peace in the Middle East. That’s best left to statesmen. Nor am I suggesting discovering a vaccine for HIV. Perhaps a scientist in a lab somewhere will eventually do that.

You don’t have to speak truth to power and put your life on the line like Aung San Suu Kyi or Nelson Mandela. You don’t need to live in exile like the Dalai Lama or cast off worldly possessions and wash the feet of the poor in Calcutta like Mother Teresa.

But you can’t just wring your hands and moan and groan about the sad state of affairs. You can’t say, “when I have more time, I’ll volunteer” or “when I’m financially secure, I’ll make a contribution” or “when the kids are grown, I’ll get involved in my community.”

None of us gets to take a “pass” on making the world a better place. We can’t leave that to the saints and the martyrs and the heroes while we idle away our fleeting time on earth watching television and surfing the web.

We all have to do something.

And we have to do something today.

And everyday.

To make the world a better place.

And it isn’t difficult.

It can start with common courtesy and civility. A “please” and a “thank you” go a long way in improving other people’s days.

How difficult is it to pick up a piece of trash on the street and dispose of it?

We can use less water, eat less meat and just consume less in general.

A hand-written note, placed in an envelope, stamped and mailed to someone who is struggling may have more of an impact than any of us realize.

We can speak out against prejudice and injustice and stand up to bullies.

Share whatever we have in abundance – our time, money, creativity, compassion, love – with others who may be lacking these gifts.

These everyday acts, done with intentionality, by every person, every day, would do more to positively impact the world than all the saints and martyrs and heroes could accomplish in a lifetime. And it starts today with you and me.

Dichotomy = Philosophy

It’s easy for me to hop on the Shosholoza Meyl, spend a day sweating in the heat of the sitter car, eat the dried meat and liquefied ice cream hawkers sell on the train, drink wine and beer with the drunk passengers, arrive in a dorp, find an off the beaten path neighborhood where I’m assured a guard dog “will eat any perpetrator” who tries to break into the house where I’m staying, walk into a stranger’s home in a township, turn over an empty five-gallon bucket, sit on it and listen to stories of poverty, racism, AIDS and tuberculosis, and at night share a room with grasshoppers and a bed with ants – which is a luxury compared to the occasions when I’ve realized, too late, that I have slept with bed bugs.

And then there are the times when I’m at some stop along the train tracks and I simply can’t bear the thought of getting on another sitter car, eating awful food and sleeping in an uncomfortable bed one more night as I continue on my journey.

I want to be back in my bachelor’s flat in Cape Town, that still smells of the lemon-scented cleansers Veronica used when she last cleaned my apartment, flip a switch that always turns on lights, plug my iPod into speakers that blast Lady Gaga or Adam Lambert tunes, walk into the kitchen, put a slice of fresh, whole wheat bread into the toaster and then slather the darkened result with thick swipes of peanut butter and pour a glass of ice cold milk, sit on the balcony, watch joggers run on the promenade along the sea as the light of the day disappears into the ocean, take a long, hot shower, brush my teeth with water that I know won’t make me sick and slip between the clean, crisp, white sheets of my double-sized bed and sink into sleep while listening to the reassuring white noise of the traffic on the street eight floors below.

Taking the sitter car is a social experiment for me, not a necessary mode of transportation. If I’m feeling tired, sweaty or a bit ruffled from third class travel, I can pull a credit card from my pocket, upgrade to a prestigious train and be back to my comfortable life in Cape Town within 24 hours. Few, if any of my fellow passengers on the sitter cars, can ever indulge in an extravagance like that.

This is the dichotomy of my life. I’m a person with sitter car proclivities living my Premier Classe life. It used to drive me nuts, until I realized it isn’t an either/or world.

Few of us are Mother Teresa. We simply won’t discard the trappings of the modern world and walk with the poor every moment of our lives. Few of us are Donald Trump. We have no interest in creating an empire where success is measured by how much stuff we have.

Most of us live within the broad expanse of this either/or world. We aren’t saints, but we aren’t sinners either. We want to make the world a better place, but we want to do so from the security of our home. We’re willing to occasionally take the sitter car of the Shosholoza Meyl to be exposed to things we didn’t know existed, but we are grateful to have the ability to generally travel through life via the Premier Classe.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We accept that much in life is the luck of the draw. By virtue of being born white or male, many of us are afforded opportunities that historically have been denied to people of color and women. Too many of us are accorded power and privilege that we did not earn. The least we can do is to acknowledge that fact.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We realize that any success we enjoy is built on a foundation laid by others. There are no “self-made” people. All of us have had help along the way. Our leg up might have come from a stable home life, an encouraging teacher, an empathetic religious leader, an anonymous donor who left her estate to a college which allowed us to receive financial assistance for our education, a government program, an employer who took a chance in hiring us early in our career. Beware of people who claim to have made it on their own, solely pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone had to have given them the bootstraps in the first place.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We value what we have. Most of us in the developed world have enough. We have a roof over our head, food in our bellies, and drinking water that isn’t going to kill us. Many of us have access to health care that extends both the quantity and quality of our years. We have cars and cellphones and refrigerators. Some of us have money in the bank and can take a vacation once a year. All of this makes us financially richer than the majority of the people in the world today. Actually, it makes us some of the richest people who have ever walked the face of the earth.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We truly understand what hard work is. Someone said to me recently that they work much too hard for their money to throw it away by making a donation to charity. Really? I responded. Do you get up long before dawn to walk to a river to fetch water that you carry back to your village on your head? Do you send your children out to scour deforested areas looking for enough kindling to start a fire to cook a meal and provide warmth? Do you toil on a small piece of sun-scorched land with a pointed stick hoping that some of the seeds you planted will actually bear fruit so you can survive another season? Do you walk out of your country with all of your possessions on your back in search of a better life elsewhere? And once you get to that “promised land,” do you face xenophobia and work two or three jobs that no one else wants so you can send money back to your family who remain in your home country? We in the developed world may work hard, but that’s not the same as having hard lives.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We give back. All of us, from the Mother Teresas of the world to the Donald Trumps, are charged with making this a better place than we found it. We have a responsibility to care for ourselves, our families and our communities. At this particular period in history, when we truly have become a global village, we have a duty to care about what happens in the impoverished townships of South Africa and the sweatshops of Asia as much as what happens down the street from where we live. More than caring, we must act by sharing our time, talents and resources with the rest of the world. “To whomever much is given, of him will much be required.”

The dichotomy of my life has become my philosophy of life. Enjoy the gifts you have been given and share those gifts with others.

If I have enough money to occasionally take the Premier Classe train, and I do, then I have enough money to make sure that someone who is poor and ill eats today, or a child who wants to go to school is given that opportunity.

If I spend some of my time helping others and if I push myself to see and experience things that are completely outside of my comfort zone, I won’t beat myself up for occasionally taking the posh train – and enjoying every second of it.

It’s not an either/or world we live in. It’s an “and” world.

We can have good health and strive to make sure poor people with HIV/AIDS have access to life-extending medications.

We can have access to clean drinking water and work to reduce the morbidity rates of children who die from diarrhea.

We can get a good education and insist that this great societal equalizer is available to all.

We can have a fabulous dinner at our favorite restaurant and ensure that no one goes hungry.

We are surrounded by abundance, yet we see only scarcity. Sometimes you have to get off the Premier Classe train and get on the sitter car of the Shosholoza Meyl to realize that.