It is a time for feeling and appreciating the good stuff happening for and around us.
I dedicate this article to you all, good and loving people.
This time of the year was a busy time for me, as I was travelling and meeting a lot of people in trying to bring a ray of sunshine into their life. I hope I succeeded in doing so, as I always had a wonderful feeling after leaving such places. Good things are happening not just because we want to, but merely because we have other people around us that connect in the same way as us and by devoting their own time and energy they help and contribute to the world.
I know that this rule applies to me, as it probably applies to you also: ‘in order to experience peace or abundance someone else is suffering’. This is probably some kind of universal law of how things go around us, but I still find it unfair and as long as I can change it, I will try to.
This was the reason why I’ve got on board in volunteering these days for sharing gifts, food and toys to kids and families that are not so ‘lucky’ in having the most basic things. It’s not just giving things for making an easier or more pleasant life, it is the encounter of two apparently different worlds.
Our action had happened in a remote rural area, where children travel for a distance of more than 30 Km by an old bus and sometimes never go to school due to bad weather conditions. What was even more surprising than this was the fact that their parents did this before by foot and completed probably the first primary classes, as their children would most probably do the same. This issue appears to me a good enough reason to struggle for a solution coming from the community itself or the public services. It would be so much easier to fund their own school, at least primary school, until kids get older and be more able to travel alone or maybe some private money investment to buy a new bus or improve public roads or any other way in making school affordable and easier to be accessed.
As I was feeling empathy for this people, I’ve kept wondering why for so many decades these people didn’t have the ability to change that?
Why?
I am very fond of Paulo Freire’s,Pedagogy of the Oppressed work, where he talks about oppressed people feeling powerless and the propagation of an entire “culture of silence”. To this community specific phenomenon I would add other different factors including the findings of the Banana experiment, which shows how each other behavior is influenced by the rules and laws applied in one given setting and not through direct experience. In other words, if this community is living for decades in such conditions, even if they are hard and inappropriate, they would still not change it, based on their believes and the way things are around them. Of course, we cannot ignore the sense of powerless that these people experience and most of the time the lack of real support.
The next question is:
WHAT can be done in order to improve living conditions and more importantly to feel part of a powerful community with decision-making and participation?
I think that, as in many other life changing situations, it all stays in the way you see and experience a certain situation. It is about mindset change, the will and the power to determine and as in many other situations it is also about unity, as power comes from many, not just one.
So, I believe that saying to these people that they can change the way their kids travel to school and find better ways it could be a good start in changing their mindset and start provoking themselves in finding new solutions. Next thing is organizing them in a group with the same concrete idea of addressing this issue all with the same voice.
The rest will come along!
Following my experience of sharing not just goods, but definitely feelings and emotions: smiles, happiness, fulfillment for both sides, it inspired me to say that I found a way to give by Celebrating the Love, felt and shared.
I step into the next year with hope, love and care and I wish you all to experience all that it is dignifying for us humans.
Merry Christmas to you all!
Magda