This story is a little dated, but since it changed the way I view life, I think it is still worth sharing.
First, I have to introduce you to my 7-year-old niece, Calie.
I love this little girl beyond reason. She is amazingly smart, talented and has a beautiful heart.
She is, however, somewhat spoiled. After all, at the time of this story, she was an only child, an only grandchild and an only niece. I think a bit of spoiling was inevitable. Despite all of our extravagant love, however, she normally doesn’t act spoiled. And there is a definite difference between being spoiled and acting spoiled.
A few months ago though, she went through a fairly bratty phase (as I imagine most children do). She wouldn’t listen, she was ungrateful and she always wanted her way. We all tried our various methods to staunch this new part of Calie, but whether it was spankings, groundings or talking-tos, nothing seemed to really get through to her.
One day, while she was still going through this lovely little phase, we were putting a puzzle together with my grandmother. It was a very large puzzle, I think 1,000 pieces, and we were each working on a different section.
Now Calie had been kind of bratty all day. She complained that her mother took the iPad to work that day and she couldn’t play on it. She complained that she didn’t get the food she wanted for a snack. Then she complained about her section of the puzzle, and demanded that she get to work on another section.
And I lost it. I really, really lost it. Granted, loosing my temper over a section of a puzzle was probably not the best thing, but the kid needed to understand her behavior was unacceptable whether it was about a puzzle or not.
So I sat her down, and I made her count to five.
She rolled her eyes, and her voice dripping with derision, she started. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi.”
And a snapped my fingers. “A child just died,” I said. “Somewhere in the world, a little boy or girl just like you died. Count to five again.”
Her eyes a little wider this time, her voice a little hesitant, she started again. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi.”
I snapped my fingers again. “Another little boy or girl just died. And they died because they were starving to death. They died because their mommy or daddy couldn’t take them to the doctor when they had a cold. Every five seconds, a child in the world dies.”
Now, I have had my fair share of human rights courses, political science courses and humanitarian courses in college. I knew these kinds of statistics like the back of my hand — you know the ones. One child dies every five seconds. Twelve children die every minute. Etc.
And as Calie’s eyes started to go wide and she started to lose that constant drip of sarcasm, I felt more and more like this was a good lesson for her to learn. So I got out my laptop and showed her pictures. I showed her pictures of starving children in Somalia, of child-soldiers in Uganda, little girls in Afghanistan who couldn’t go to school and pictures of child slaves.
(Photo found on Press TV – http://presstv.com/detail/204579.html)
I told her all about the millions of children in the world who have nothing — the children who don’t have enough food to eat, who can’t go to school, who have to start working while they are still basically babies. I told her she should feel grateful for what she has, since so many people in the world have absolutely nothing.
And as I sat there feeling superior about my knowledge of the world, my 7-year-old niece did exactly what we should all do when we are confronted with this harsh reality — she cried.
She called her mother to apologize for being mean that morning. She apologized to my grandmother for not appreciating her snack. She apologized to me about the puzzle. And the whole time she was apologizing, she was crying for little children she didn’t know.
I admit, this was probably a little much for a 7-year-old acting a little spoiled. But, at the same time, starvation, malnutrition and death is too much for the millions of children around the world who face this reality everyday. So I comforted Calie, assured her not to feel guilty for her blessings, but to be grateful. She stopped crying and I put my laptop away and then we went on about our business.
Later that day, however, when we were working on our puzzle in harmony, Calie asked, “Aunt Caty, what are we going to do?”
And I was stumped. I had no idea what she was talking about. I had moved on. I wasn’t thinking about starving children anymore because they were in a different world from me.
“What do you mean Calie?” I asked
“What are we going to do about all the kids in the world? All the kids who don’t have food or can’t go to school?” she asked.
All I could do was stare at her. My 7-year-old niece, who I was trying to teach a lesson to, took the lesson a step further. She took it all the way home; took it to where it really mattered.
The lesson wasn’t about being a brat. Or it shouldn’t have been. It should not have been about her behavior. It should not have made the suffering of those children a means to an end, a way to get my niece to behave. The lesson should have been about them. It should have been about their suffering and our relation to it.
And she taught me that.
These are real problems — very real problems — that are not, and cannot, be far removed from our own lives.
The scientific or logical reasons extreme poverty cannot continue are easy — When diseases are allowed to spread in developing countries they will spread easily here as well, especially as travel becomes more accessible. When states are poor and/or controlled by unstable military dictatorships, they become a safe-haven for terrorists. Instability around the world, especially when our world is this interconnected, can affect even the most developed nations. These are the places we send our troops and our aid money, it is where we get our food and our oil. This instability affects our economy and our employment rate.
But this blog is not about those reasons, although they matter. This blog is about what a little girl in the second grade immediately recognized: extreme poverty is wrong.
So thank you, Calie, for pointing out to me how calloused and apathetic I was. Thank you for reminding me that knowing about a problem does not mean you are helping. Thank you for reminding me that being blessed does mean you have an obligation to help; it doesn’t just mean you have to be grateful. Thank you for reminding me that just because it is a big problem (a very big problem), doesn’t mean we should just give up or that we can’t make a difference. Because we can. Even if it is just helping one person, that matters. That makes a difference.
If you need some ideas on where to look to help, I’ve posted a few links that I use on the bottom of this article.
