The Way I See It #2
July 31, 2009
Ignorance is bliss.
It’s a common saying, but so true. It’s probably nice to not know about the issues of the world. To know that the shoes you wear were probably made by kids in a sweatshop. The chocolate you eat by forced labor. The clean water you drink being so exceptionally rare and hard to come by for 1.1 billion people. The fact that there’s 27 million slaves, many of those children. Blood diamonds, to minerals stripped from the Congo fueling the ever long conflict that has been the deadliest conflict since WWII, to the genocide of Darfur, to the oppression of basic human freedoms in many parts of the world such as Burma and Tibet. It’s easy when you don’t know about the AID/HIV epidemic or the malaria that kills thousands everyday.
Ignorance is bliss.
Unfortunately, I’m not blissful. And it’s for this reason that I can’t give up and you can’t give up. It’s exhausting really. I’m a realist, but I also view things in the light of what they could be ideally. And being part-idealist is tiring, but as long as there is something that I can do about it, I will. As long as there is something that I can stand up for, I will. And there’s nothing more encouraging than having good friends who have the same heart as you do and want to help as well. A good friend of mine puts it perfectly when he says this:
“If you came to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you came because your liberation is bound together with mine, then let us walk together.”
That’s the way i see it.
