Perspective

Does this board make my tail look big? 

My plans for today had to change.  Originally, I planned to head out of the city to visit my friend’s relatives.  My friend had prepped for the visit.  They are extremely poor – no light, no food, only a shack, sheltering the parents and some children.  I’ve seen this type of thing before, but, for some reason, I had a certain apprehension.  I am very close to my friend.  It breaks my heart to see her relatives hungry.  I search for ways to help without insulting dignity.

About a year ago, I met my friend’s sister; the wife of a farmer.  She too is very poor.  In her home she has a mat, a charcoal grill, a small jar of salt and a nearly empty bag of rice.  She also has two pots for cooking.  In the corner, there is an old fashioned rifle where the gunpowder is poured down the barrel, tamped and a plug is dropped in afterwards.  That’s pretty much all I saw.

We visited for about an hour or so.  She was cooking dinner for her family.  Dinner was a handful of rice and two tiny pieces of chicken.  A generous host, she offered me a piece of the chicken and some sticky rice.  I could not accept it – my belly was full from a marvelous meal earlier that day.  She was one of the many kind and sincere people I have met in Laos and her abject poverty was shadowed by her happiness and her show of love for her child and sister and her openness to meet her sister’s friend. 

I remember feeling quite poor that day.  Not because I have no money or because I am hungry, but because I have had too much.  In comparison, I have lived a life of opulence.  In my family also, there is a wealth of love and kindness.  In my family there are unbreakable bonds that will last through eternity.  We use the phrase “I’m starving” only as a euphemism – we have been very fortunate to not know true hunger.  In the back of my mind, as I sat there that day, I felt an incomprehensible feeling that somehow because of my fortunate circumstances, I understood nothing of life.  It’s hard to put into words exactly where that thought comes from yet it is an intangible feeling I will never forget.

Yesterday, in the news, President George W. Bush commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby for his obstruction of justice on matters of national security of the USA.  I think about the amount of money spent as a result of this one decision.  There were millions of dollars spent on media, broadcasting, and advertising.  There were immeasurable megawatts of energy spent on reactions to this decision – op-ed articles, analyst responses, heated discussions in pubs and think tanks.  It seems that poor Mr. Libby will still be out of about a quarter of a million dollars in penalties and suffers irrevocable damage to his career.

The people who I did not meet today, they don’t know who Scooter Libby is.  They don’t know who Valerie Plame is.  They have never heard of Joseph Wilson.  They don’t have a television with cable and CNN and BBC.  They have empty bags of rice and hungry children and they burn non-existent candles down to the very last thread of a wick.  The millions of dollars which were spent around one decision in the first world yesterday did not consider whether these people will eat tomorrow.  The turmoil and suffering and career devastation of this one person seems so out of context with what most of the world thinks about everyday; where will I find my next meal.  It’s times like this, I wonder why I bother to turn on the television at all.

I hope tomorrow to head out of the city to meet these relatives.  I am not sure what I should bring.  I’ve considered bringing a copy of the Bangkok Post or a video clip of Mr. Libby’s perjurous testimony.  Instead, I think I will bring some rice and some left over duck from tonight’s dinner.  As I sit in their home, I will try not to think about how badly Mr. Libby is suffering.  I will try not to think about how difficult it is to be a war time president or a whistle-blowing ambassador.  I will try not to think about a lot of things that seem so out of perspective when we are stripped of our comfortable and contorted first world values.