If anyone is having trouble feeling grateful…then take a stroll around the Amnesty International website…
I love Amnesty International. I love that they do what they do, and I refer to them in my book The High Heeled Guide to Enlightenment as a great source of inspiration and a giant ‘reality check’ for any person feeling sorry for his or her self.
We all come up against walls in life. Sometimes we are about ready to go under and give up on our dreams. Sometimes we rage against the intolerable cruelty of our own lives and the seeming unfairness of it all.
I find Amnesty International (AI) to be an antidote to our own sorrowful self. Because no matter how hard you have it, you can still at least entertain your dreams without true fear of murder, torture, cruel regimes or genocide. It is most unlikely that you or I will ever have it as hard as some of the poor souls strewn across their AI’s pages.
I believe that making ourselves knowledgeable about such monstrosities of the human condition is helpful in our path towards enlightenment and even just simple sanity.
If we understand our nature, and the depths of horror occurring on our planet then we are in a better position to help defeat it.
We are empowered to stop feeling sorry for ourselves because we didn’t get the promotion, the bus is late or the children are kicking up all hell!
With this understanding we can start to feel grateful and make our lives better, and the lives of people around us, perhaps in time reaching out in some way to those less fortunate in any way that we possibly can.
I am hugely guilty of feeling sorry for myself.
I was doing it earlier this week. I was tired and grouchy, and like a sleepy baby I had a great big moan and groan about it. But I look to the AI pages and I think, “well thank goodness I’m not facing stoning to death, genocide, imprisonment, rape or a state of warfare.”
Western Women have come along way, we may not be quite there yet.
If we commit adultery we can work it out or get a divorce, not so for the poor Iranian Women buried in the ground and stoned to death by a baying mob.
And this in the 21st Century!
We have come a long way, but that is not true for all of us humans, our lives are the fabulous exception.
We have a little money, we have running water, we have human rights, we are protected.
We have no idea how lucky we are to have been born where we were, so instead we flip out when the electric goes down, or get grouchy with a barista because the coffee is not hot enough.
We need to take a serious look at the comparison and then take a deep breath and thank our lucky stars!
So how do we begin to help these people who have taken the life that we so easily could have been born into? Self-education, promotion and self-awareness is a great place to start.
Don’t shy away from their suffering because it upsets you. It should upset you. By getting upset we help make a difference.
I ask you to light a candle for our foreign sisters, and the ones on our own soil who suffer as we eat sleep and play in relative peace.
Say a little prayer and thank goodness it won’t be you tonight.
Think of them in their solitude as you are in yours and set the intention to make a change on this planet in whatever small way you can.
Shed a tear of steely determination and be grateful that you will wake happy and safe in the sunny, suburban morning.
7 Comments
Prayer said, candle lit, thanks given for all my blessings. I’m off to a fun party tonight. So glad to read your thoughtful post before I head out the door. Calms my spirit and makes my heart open up. Thanks Alice
Great post, and a timely reminder that the “First World Problems” I am grouching over are nothing. Candle lit, blessings counted, state of being re-aligned.
Funny, I give to Amnesty International, but rarely go on their website; mainly because the images upset me so much. I like the point that it is only by getting people upset that they will take action, the whole reason I signed up to give to AI was because the problems they help combat upset me so much.
Thanks for lighting the candle ladies! I do think that if we acknowledge the suffering, even if only occasionally, then we can start to help make changes. I am so glad you gals feel the same.
It scares me that there are people in the western world who don’t even realise or acknowledge what is going on beyond their comfy existences…
I often forget how trivial my ‘gripes’ are…and then remember the causes that I would like to light a candle for’…I have three…banning female circumcision, helping girls that deal with ‘obstetric fistulas’ (from having babies when they are very young) and rape as a tool of war in Sudan.
I HATE all these things. HATE, HATE, HATE . I wish that we could band together and help these women get out of these situations.
Alice
Your point is well made and very relevant in Australia today. I used to do some work for AI, speaking at schools about the refugee issue when Howard was in power. Now its back in the news and being used as a political football as much as ever. It wasn’t so long ago that Australians were prepared to let human beings, including children, be imprisoned, often for years, behind razor wire in the desert. I fear we are moving back to that sad state of affairs and AI will once again have to throw light on the fate of these vulnerable people. For some reason, some Australians seem willing to demonise and dehumanise people, most of whom are in genuine fear of persecution and torture. We can also think of the lives of many Indigenous people to realise that right here in Australia, some of us live lives of desperate poverty and hardship.
Very true Mike, I am always amazed at how many people are able to dehumanise the plight of refugees also
Alex – totally agree. Maybe we can band together and so something about it. not sure what, but there must be something. I think if you wish it, then we can make it happen. Sharni – you feeling it? Maybe get our heads together. Maybe there are existing groups out there other than AI that we can join / support / raise fund for etc etc.
Mike – I’m writing from the UK and I must say that the willingness to dehumanise people is not a trait solely of Australians- as I’m sure you know! I think it’s a problem endemic in the human race. THe need for power and control seems to warp and turn vile, degrading and desperate. This occurs on every level of existence and great abominations are demonstrated by those in positions of relative education , power and money (politicians, leaders, big business), to those who are disempowered, marginalized and poverty stricken (child soldiers, guerillas, terrorists, police, gangs). It is mindboggling and deeply disturbing.
Of course it’s always worst when our leaders and governments condone it. Perhaps why the Iran stoning situation is so horrifying, because it’s not a local renegade law, it’s an official law enshrined in the laws of their land.
Gosh, lighting a candle seems such a small gesture right now. But I guess its the symbolism that counts, the becoming prepared to want to acknowledge what is occurring and not to ignore it. That has to count for something.