Include documentaries about opium brides.
Lest I lay here all night imagining living in that world, the world where you are so desperately poor you take a loan from a drug trafficker. A drug trafficker that may return at harvest time to find your crop has been destroyed by an ill-thought-out plan by the Afghani government to destroy opium production. A drug trafficker that will find you without his money, a debt unpaid. Who will then kidnap your husband, potentially to kill him, unless you in turn give away your 7-yr-old daughter as payment. Essentially selling your little girl into sexual slavery and a life wrought with abuse of all forms. I imagine laying in a hut, on a hard ground, my darling children surrounding me. Awaiting the moment when men with kalishnokovs surround us and rip my daughter from my arms.
I lay here imagining it, and then reality brings me back to my comfortable bed. My cozy second-floor apartment. The room adjacent where my two well-fed, well-clothed, healthy children are sleeping soundly in their respective beds. Safe from men with no souls and assault rifles. Safe from any kind of hardship, from worry, from hunger, from war.
Sometimes I am disgusted with myself for the petty things I worry about. For the unimportant annoyances, the minor drawbacks, mere hiccups. I do try though. I try to look at the broader picture of this life, with respect to the time that has come before and the future that is to be. I remind myself of the power of the human spirit, how utterly resilient we as humans can be. These human beings can keep living with such atrocities being committed before their very eyes. They can persevere through unspeakable horrors wrought by mankind.
What am I capable of?
Lest I lay here all night imagining living in that world, the world where you are so desperately poor you take a loan from a drug trafficker. A drug trafficker that may return at harvest time to find your crop has been destroyed by an ill-thought-out plan by the Afghani government to destroy opium production. A drug trafficker that will find you without his money, a debt unpaid. Who will then kidnap your husband, potentially to kill him, unless you in turn give away your 7-yr-old daughter as payment. Essentially selling your little girl into sexual slavery and a life wrought with abuse of all forms. I imagine laying in a hut, on a hard ground, my darling children surrounding me. Awaiting the moment when men with kalishnokovs surround us and rip my daughter from my arms.
I lay here imagining it, and then reality brings me back to my comfortable bed. My cozy second-floor apartment. The room adjacent where my two well-fed, well-clothed, healthy children are sleeping soundly in their respective beds. Safe from men with no souls and assault rifles. Safe from any kind of hardship, from worry, from hunger, from war.
Sometimes I am disgusted with myself for the petty things I worry about. For the unimportant annoyances, the minor drawbacks, mere hiccups. I do try though. I try to look at the broader picture of this life, with respect to the time that has come before and the future that is to be. I remind myself of the power of the human spirit, how utterly resilient we as humans can be. These human beings can keep living with such atrocities being committed before their very eyes. They can persevere through unspeakable horrors wrought by mankind.
What am I capable of?
I think about that all the time. We have it so, so good.
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