But what of those in Aleppo or Mogadishu. What of the urchin growing up in Bombay sleeping on the street, very much alive to the brutality of other human beings.
As we eat our cornflakes or open the fridge door to the sight of
an, as yet arbitrary, "eat by date", array of food, we never consider
the left overs in the rubbish bins, hungrily surveyed by the down and
out a mile or two from where we live.
Life is a passage and by 'some chance' we have a right of passage denied to others, a gift of birth for which we can claim no credit other than luck.
Would our lives be better if we did a daily 'book keeping'
exercise to see how fortunate we are, rather than the resentment of a
missing an opportunity, of some "might have been" moment. The very act
of being able to read what you read, irrespective of
what sense you make of it, has enormous implications when compared to
the billions of illiterate people who, not only are poor and probably
hungry most of the time but who live in and amongst an even greater impoverishment, the lack of hope !!
That throw of the dice, the parents. How infrequently we offer up
our prayers to them in their efforts to make of us what they lacked in
themselves. That bottomless lake of love and goodwill towards our own
happiness, that constant tendering and nudging
our hand to learn from their mistakes. The infinite energy to make a
meal and read a bedtime story, to sort out a squabble and make sure the
homework is done. The everlasting courier service they perform to meet the assumptive demand of the young, who in their
own bubble are for ever demanding more.
If we chose well we were rewarded with the protection to gain time to unwind our own personality, to develop who we were within, the blandishments to do more, to gain a sense of what it means to be human.
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