In a society which is all about what you can get- how do you continue to live in it selflessly? Is a question that I'm becoming increasingly troubled with.
Its not going away.
I spend a lot of time in thought, and what bothers me even more is that despite all the thinking that I do... I don't feel like I'm really doing anything and it's driving me crazy.
I have to step out of the Western mindset that tells us that "giving money = help"
While I acknowledge that I am among the world's wealthiest (on a global scale where a third of the world lives on less than $2 a day), and that will still be true when Scotty pulls out of the workforce and enters SFU as a full-time student at the end of the month, money won't be my best answer to changing my world around me.
I just don't want to be one of those people who justifies living a self-focused life by saying "I'm a good person."
While I continue battling this out, I'm finding my job surreal- the girls continue to amaze me- saying some of the most profound things. Sometimes I feel as though they're closer to really figuring it all out than I am.
Today, a 13 year old girl, after she lugs two garbage bags full of clothes into the livingroom that she wants to give to thrift: "I've started to realize that I don't need a lot of clothes." (Sidenote: these kids have nothing, no joke, they are in a continual state of moving from group home to group home, they accumulate very little).
Hands down, these kids that I've had the priviledge of working with over the past year have given me my greatest compliment (last week- I balled as she said it- she stared me in the eyes and spoke right to my core... I'm still shaken)and my most treasured gift (after knowing me only a few weeks, she dug through her meager belongings and presented me with a gift that she felt was "perfect" for me) and have demonstrated true courage and character as they battle horrors that no one, let alone a child, should ever have to endure.
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