Alexander vanRossum

Yesterday I made a Twitter/FB post that said “First Melanoma. Then bad sick. Then dead battery. Now flat tire. That’s it, I’m done with bad for now, right?”

Soon after I retracted it with a statement that I realized that, basically, what I have to deal with is miniscule compared to what the majority of the world has to deal with. That said, I now begin a (hopefully) short rant on the subject. Most of this stems from one passage in an article about cruise lines stopping at Labadee (near Haiti) that Neal Boortz (@Talkmaster) posted on Twitter today. The rest just comes from the opulence that I witness on a daily basis.

The delightful passage is this ‘”It was hard enough to sit and eat a picnic lunch at Labadee before the quake, knowing how many Haitians were starving,” said another [passenger on the Cruise Critic internet forum]. “I can’t imagine having to choke down a burger there now.”‘

What I can’t see, is myself ever thinking like this individual. I pray that I never think like this individual. Many people would look at this and think “What’s the big deal? That guy is just showing his compassion for the situation! He’s just showing that he cares!” I disagree with this line of thought – I believe that this individual is showing his guilt. Not guilt for having done anything wrong – he hasn’t – but he already has established that he has enjoyed a burger on this beach while Haitians starved less than 10 miles away, and this has clearly bothered him in the past. Yet, it’s apparent, he doesn’t allow himself to think that this is truly wrong until said starving Haitians were stricken by a disaster of such incredible, unbelievable magnitude that hundreds of thousands of human beings lie rotting in the sun, the stench permeating everywhere, mothers and fathers grief stricken as they search with bloodied hands for the bodies of their children, hoping against hope that they might be alive.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the attitude that I have seen of the majority of the “civilized” nations of the world. We are so caught up in everything that we have that we fail to realize that we have so much more than 90% of the world will ever even see.

I realized today that I am so wealthy that it defies logic. Yes, I had melanoma, but I have the best healthcare system in the world to cure me of it – which it did. Had I been in a different place, I would most likely still have a cancerous tumor that would be slowly leeching destructive cells into my lymph nodes, waiting to die a slow and painful death to advanced lymphoma. Yes, I was sick – pretty badly sick as well – i had a temperature of 103 before i broke my thermometer in a hallucinogenic rage from the fever – but I had readily available and cheap over the counter medicines that combatted the fever and allowed me to function for the remainder of the weekend. I even got a new thermometer for just under ten bucks.

As far as the battery and the tire go – I can’t even bring myself to reconcile why I thought that these were such bad things – I have a car and a fairly reliable traffic system on which to use it – where most people in this world don’t even have an ass to pull a cart with. I have so much that it is unbelievable that I would ever think that I am suffering, yet, I do. My first look is to see the bad in a given situation, instead of realizing that I am so incredibly blessed to be in the apparently bad situation in the first place.

Now, I am in no way saying that everything negative is simply “deserved” or “justified.” No, I’m simply stating that the next time that you spill your coffee on your $200 suit and the seat of your Lexus or get stuck behind the school bus when you are already late to work, give pause and realize that you are incredibly fortunate to have your $5 latte, your luxury car and your job in the city, when there are people who would do just about anything to be able to earn just that five bucks a week. We may be one of the richest nations in the world, but when we do not reach out to the rest of the people out there, we are no better than the dictators that oppress, the tyrants that destroy, and the zealots that kill for nothing more than a sideways glance or a raised foot. I pray that I will not allow myself to become so caught up in my own “suffering” again that I fail to remember that there are others out there that truly know what suffering is, and that I will be led to know how it is that I am to reach them myself, with the wealth that I have been given.

My idea of suffering is a pittance to what the majority of the world goes through, and I could have five thousand more events occur of similar magnitude to what I have experienced recently and still have not scratched the surface of what true suffering is. I’ve realized, even if I’m left with the sun above and the ground beneath my feet, I’ve been given more than I can even imagine – God has provided me with so much that it is sickening to me to think that I should be “left alone” and not have to “suffer” anymore.

~/A\V/