The weight of privilege.

I’m feeling the weight of privilege today. 

Someone I know, we’ll call him David, texted me late last night asking if I needed any help around my house, as he was looking for a part-time job.  This is not an uncommon occurrence, though many people just go straight to asking for money instead of asking for an opportunity to earn money, but for some reason this particular request felt like a punch in the gut and I was surprised to find tears rolling down my cheeks. 

Maybe it’s because I know a little bit of his story… David is just a few years younger than me, and the majority of his growing-up years were spent in fear and hiding instead of in school. The brutal civil war raged from 1989-1996, years he should have been learning how to read and write and dreaming of what he wanted to be when he grew up but instead his mother had to hide him from the soldiers that liked to kidnap little boys, brainwash them into mindless killing machines, and send them out to destroy entire villages.  Rape and senseless murder of women and children was a common weapon used in the war. There was never enough food, no school, no opportunities to do anything other than try to survive another day.  

I can’t imagine what that life must have been like, and probably shouldn’t even try.  People older than me can remember what life was like before; it’s my generation that was robbed and raped and pillaged and plundered… because they were born here.  It’s so unfair.  I was born into my middle class midwestern family, I went to school and dreamed of what I wanted to be when I grew up and those dreams weren’t ridiculous.  I knew anything was possible.  

So now in my mid-thirties I find myself working alongside friends who should have every opportunity open to them like I do but they don’t, simply because of where they were born, something none of us have any control over.  David is considered a ‘lucky’ one because he does have a regular job and doesn’t need to hustle for food money every day; but I doubt anyone in the states would consider him ‘lucky’… he makes about $100 a month working four-day weeks as a security guard. Two other days a week he helps his sister in the market, trying to sell pineapples and papayas and anything else they can get ahold of to sell; it means long days in the hot sun for the possibility of earning a dollar or two the whole day. He has a wife that he loves and a few small children and is barely squeaking by to keep them in the house they are renting and rice on the table.  Meat is out of the question.  Soon the children will be old enough to go to school, and while primary school is ‘free’, they’re required to have uniforms and notebooks and other things that all cost money.  

David wants his kids to be able to dream and hope for a future that he never had.  

And the whole thing just makes me angry. His story is certainly not the only one; dozens, hundreds, thousands of my generation in this country have lost their futures due to circumstances well outside their control. What kind of solutions would you give him? 

Go back to school?  A fine idea, except it costs money.  There’s no such thing as student loans or aid programs here. 

Find another job? Doing what? He can barely read and write and can’t learn another trade without paying for it.  

So he’s asking me if he can come wash my floors.  He doesn’t want a handout, he wants an honest way to earn money to put food on the table and send his kids to school. And I’m wrecked. 

It’s not the first time I’ve wrestled this and won’t be the last.  I don’t have an answer, in fact I’ve spent much of the morning crying out for one. It makes me wish I had a little more money to offer; how privileged I am to be able to drop $2k on plane tickets a few times a year, to pay for an apartment that has electricity and running water and air conditioning and a security guard and extra rooms that sit empty most of the time.  Now I know I can’t just give up these things; I need to keep myself healthy to be able to do the work I know I’m supposed to be doing here. 

But I’m a natural problem solver and want to figure out the best most logical solution and just fix it… but if there was a logical, easy solution someone would have found it by now and we wouldn’t be in this place.  Nothing is easy; the big questions of life and why and privilege and blessing are huge and complicated and bring up even more questions and wonderings and anger and resentment and life is just so completely, ridiculously unfair. 

And it’s Monday morning and that truth is weighing heavily on me as I sip my coffee and eat the breakfast I never wondered if I would be able to have.  I don’t know what my role is in David’s life or any of the thousands like him that will cross my path in the coming months and years.  I don’t know what to do with this except to lift it back up with open hands and put one foot in front of the other and do the next right thing and whatever it looks like to bring heaven to earth, to him, to me, today and every day.  

--K