After seeing endless shacks, depravity, pain, struggle for survival, I don’t know how to deal with the privilege I have. There is something in my bones that says, “I don’t want it”: my upbringing, my opportunity, the generous gifts I have received during my lifetime. What makes it fair? They bathe in the streets while I access an endless supply of heated water.
Maybe they are the ones who truly know how to depend on God. And as I waste even the slightest bit or am not generous with what I have been GIVEN, not even "earned", maybe they are shaking their heads at my naivete. I have lived four months among the poor, in a neighborhood of poverty, but certainly this does not make me poor. It is not enough to see it with my own eyes, I still have no idea what that life is like. I sometimes think about that during my occasional trips for a snack at McDonalds. But I quickly cast out those thoughts, to prevent that guilt from affecting the enjoyment of my 39 Peso Crispy Chicken Sandwich.
I don’t want the privilege because it has just been given to me. Just as poverty has been given to my Filipino friends here. That makes me feel guilty. I can escape the poverty over here, as I will do in only one day, but most do not have that luxury.
These feelings remind me of the story told by author John Krakauer in the novel “Into the Wild.” The story chronicles Chris McCandless, the privileged college grad who gave up everything to live in the Alaskan wilderness. He even donated or burned his money before he set off on the adventure. When I first read this, as a practical high schooler, I saw his story as a waste. Now, however, I understand the adventure as a desire be self-sufficient. To live off one’s own ability instead of living off of what has been given to us. To feel the struggles and constraints of the impoverished.
This trip to the Philippines has showed me how little we deserve, if we deserve anything at all. Surely not wealth and excess. And yet, here I am ready to come home. Back to my job that pays an amount inconceivable to many Filipinos. I pray that when I get back, I would not forget about injustice and poverty when managing my resources. After all, the impoverished have more to teach the rich than the inverse. About simplicity and what is truly important in life and what should bring happiness. As my friend Robert told me, “we are simply broken in different ways and through community we can work through our brokenness.”
I hope to have been changed in this way and that these 4 months do not stop impacting me when I leave because injustice is not limited to the Philippines.
