Free Rice
I think it was 5th grade? Maybe, yes. I would have a “Current Events” weekly assignment. Every Monday the class would have to take an article from the Sunday paper and write a response of one single solitary page in length. It was to be about how this article related to our own life. I always had so much trouble with this assignment. But then again, I had trouble with nearly every assignment in school. Why? Simple, my mind was always other places. Back then my life was Super Soakers, Nintendo games and remote controlled cars. Our course my life is vastly different now from what it was then. Or at least I like to think it is. It’s odd how your priorities change. I’m sure even my priorities of today will again be vastly different 10, 15, or 20 years in the future. At some point my love of video games, water guns and toy cars eventually gave way to guitar’s girls and guns. Kidding about the guns! I’m not a fan of guns. Who knows, maybe when I’m 75 I’ll retire to Texas and own a cattle farm and carry around a big shotgun? Anything is possible. I’m going to say PROBABLY not though. Today my priorities still include guitars and girls, but they also include reading, finance, computers, coffee, tea, beer, and of course blogging. Part of me feels as though I’m either on a precipice of another change, or at the very least another significant addition to my interests and life.
So why was that assignment so difficult? Well, my biggest issue with this assignment was the fact that we didn’t subscribe to any newspaper. Why? It’s a long story… but the short version is basically the living situation at the time was 3 kids (me included) and a one parent working and going to school at the same time while also raising those 3 kids. For the most part my Mom raised us. This is NOT to say my dad couldn’t have been around. He’s a GREAT guy! And I have nothing but the best to say of him. It was just the dynamics of the situation at the time. My mom was and kinda still is, a stubborn proud do-it-your-self-er and refused any help from anyone or her parents. So here we were not able to afford even lunch (we were on the free lunch program in school) yet we have grandparents that drove Mercedes and lived in the California next to celebrities (see yesterday’s post on celebs). Not that I entirely disagree with trying to make it on your own. But accepting help sometimes is ok too! Anywho, so in order to get the paper we relied on left-overs from neighbors and family friends. Not food, just the Sunday paper. I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. It’s made me much more humble. Yea maybe it wasn’t the best way to go about things but she didn’t do too bad of a job teaching us the right morals and work ethic. At least I think that’s what she was trying to prove. Something to the effect of that just because there are things available to you doesn’t always mean you should take them. You should def try to go out on your own and get them for yourself. This is a much more rewarding experience I think. And I’ll disclose that the Cali lifestyle lived by my grandparents was as well the product of TONS of hard work and core ethics of saving and living wisely.
So sometimes you don’t always have things available to you and it takes a slight bit of extra effort to get the same thing that someone else might have more readily available.
That’s the thing. For one person just getting up in the morning to make coffee takes all the energy in the world and this will always change throughout your life as well. What might be easy, OR hard right now could eventually reverse and most likely will. Or as was my case in 5th grade just obtaining a newspaper wasn’t easy. Let alone having to write the article itself. Yet when I would come into school that next morning the teacher had no way of knowing all the work that was put into each kid’s article. He simply graded on how well the assignment was done. Some kids, I’m almost positive either had the articles entirely written by their parents, or they were 50 or 75 percent done by them. This is one of the things about looking at others in life. We don’t look at them and think about where they are starting from or their handicaps. We just think about how WE do it and how easy something might be for us and that we don’t understand why this person is having such a hard time with something that should be so simple. This happens a lot with computers and myself. I’ll often not understand why someone doesn’t get a concept. Only after taking a step back and trying to see it from their shoes do I get a better picture. So what I’ve learned from reflecting back is to keep an open mind and know that everyone isn’t starting from the same spot. Some people start from an extraordinary advantage where others have extreme disadvantages. I recently read the first 2 of 3 books in The Hunger Games series and this was a prominent theme throughout. Those who are extremely disadvantaged and those who are extremely advantaged living in completely isolated worlds. Worlds, LITERALLY isolated by giant electrified fences.
If I had to write that “Current Events” article today, I would have a plethora of news sources to choose from: Google news, New York Times online, and thousands of other website that push news content over the web. It’s very easy to find articles and even copy and paste the bits you want to react to and then write something in a word document and whip it up in only a short period of time, unless of course you don’t have a clue as to how to type or a computer let alone to type on. Now if you are reading this you are probably thinking… “WHAT???!?!?! WHO DOESN’T OWN A COMPUTER?!?! Or have a connection to the Internet.”
The answer to that question is… most of the world. The most popular device on the planet is actually the mobile phone. Not the computer, and not the tv, and not even the automobile. This clip is pretty long. But if you have time it’s a good watch.
http://fora.tv/2009/09/24/Mobile_Phones_The_Next_4_Billion_with_Tomi_Ahonen
So what am I getting at with all this? Well most of the idea for this post today was inspired by something said at yesterday’s sermon by the pastor at the Victory church. As I said previously I have no real strong ties with any one religion. So as a full disclosure I don’t specifically identify with anything at the moment. I wasn’t really raised any specific religious background. I had bits and pieces and so what I’m doing is simply being an observer. My goal was to go and listen and take in everything at this church for as long as I am recording my current song. But…
I’ll be honest. I’m enjoying it. I really am. I even got up enough guts to say hello to the pastor and shake his hand yesterday on the way out. He asked if I had been there before and I said it was my third visit. He said he’d be interested in talking more with me if I felt up to it next week. I said ok, sure why not?
I apologize for wavering off topic. So, yesterday’s topic at this church was financial hazards. The theme for the past few along with next few sermons is mayhem and how to deal with it in your life. The basic gist of it was that money, property and economical prosperity etc. changes hands and comes and goes. But that it really doesn’t belong to any of us ultimately and that in the long run you’ll only really get what you need when you need it. More specifically it will be provided to you when it’s most needed. At least that’s what I got out of it. But it makes sense. I know that I may not be living the highlife right now. But I am very satisfied and completely happy with what I have and as well I have yet to go a day in my life without food in my belly…
This was the part that really interested me. This actually wasn’t part of the main sermon/teachings of the day. This was an afterthought that was mentioned that had to do with a trip this summer they are taking to Uganda to help with distributing medical supplies and food. This came up because the pastor was re-telling a story of just this past weekend where some kids went on a retreat (I know of retreats from where I work, but I don’t know if they are the same kind of thing. I’ve never done this sort of thing myself, I only know of what it is.) While on this one of the nights they gave the kids only rice for dinner. This was to show that in some parts of the world kids receive only rice for nearly every meal, if they are lucky. He said they later had a pizza party that night. The idea was to let them believe they were only going to receive just that small bowl of rice for that entire evening.
It’s a pretty bold way to make a point. Much the way my mom refused help as much as she did from her parents during my youth. But I’m sure it will leave a lasting impact on the kids. That story more than anything else I heard yesterday got me thinking for today’s writing. The world. How lives are vastly different not years ago from today. But instead of spanning time, spanning geography and culture.
As of right now I sit writing this on my 2 thousand dollar MacBook pro in Cosi while drinking a cup of coffee and eating a sandwich that I paid 10 dollars for. I can only imagine how many mouths my MacBook pro ALONE would feed in many parts of the world.
If anyone who reads my blog regularly remembers there was a post a while back with my favorite educational and academic video websites. One of these sites is Fora.tv, which is the site that hosts the video mentioned above. That site often has videos relating to distressed parts of the world where people live in sometimes pretty dire conditions.
One site attempting to help with supplying food to impoverished parts of the world is a site called Free Rice (hence the title of this post.)
Free rice has been around for a few years now. The goal is to donate rice in exchange for correct answers by the user to vocabulary questions. They also have many other topics now. Large corporate donors who display ads on the page pay for the rice.
Now the pastor was suggesting if you can’t go on the trip, then it would be great if you could sponsor someone to go. I don’t think I am THAT well off. But I’m never opposed to being charitable. So I might consider giving if allowed maybe 20 or 50 dollars to the cause. I mean you’re talking to someone who gave 1,250 dollars to the lupus foundation in exchange for a hat on eBay… it was a nice hat (I talked about this a while back in my blog posts. It was for a contest that Julia Nunes was doing.). I’ve been giving 10 dollars during each, what’s it called? “Offering” right? I mean I’m there for an hour and to me I get something out of it… I’ve decided this is maybe some sort of food for thought or food for the soul. As I sit writing this at Cosi, I paid 10 dollars for a sandwich and cup of coffee. So the 10 dollars is if nothing else for them to let me sit and think and enjoy the experience. I’m using it as well as a thinking and retrospective time on what’s happened that week in my life. So speaking of thinking…
I’ve just been thinking a lot about current events and about those in the world who live lives vastly different from how I live my own. They all have priorities. Again this point is driven home MANY times by the main character Katniss in The Hunger Games. She will often speak of how vastly different her world is compared to those who live in the capital. My take on the series is that each of the districts really represents a nation or group of nations around the world. And that District 12 along with the other impoverished districts is most likely meant to represent any of the countries living in third world conditions. The capital is perhaps representing America?
So what was the precipice of change I alluded to earlier in this post? Well I find something very spiritually filling about attending church. Not to say I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for all my life. But It’s definitely changed how I feel about priorities. I think maybe spiritual direction has just as much importance as finances, music, girls, and toy remote controlled cars. What has started more as an experience for music has affected me much more substantially than I had anticipated. What really does interest me is that everyone who attends seems truly genuinely happy to be there. I like that. If nothing else then I believe in the feeling that comes from this. There’s a feeling of community for sure that you can just pick up from the vibe of everyone there. Again, not that I’m saying I’m making any choice on anything about religion. But there’s a possibility that I might end up continuing to go after I finish the song I’m working on. If not to this place explore other churches.
So what I’m trying to say is that there is a lot going on in the world that I feel I haven’t been paying attention to. There are so many ways of living that I’ve completely missed and all of it I believe from Uganda to the local church has significant value that I’ve been over looking in my life. So what I’ve decided to do every Monday in honor of my 5th grade assignment is to write a response piece to worldly current events. So come back next Monday for a current events reaction piece. Change is always around us.
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