abaculus

“Do you know what is happening in Darfur right now?” the girl at the STAND UBC booth asked me. I was gaily clubs-shopping that day.

For a moment, I wanted to say “yes”. Instincts do not like to admit ignorance, especially when you know that it is something important. “No,” I answered truthfully. The girl’s face fell, as I had half-expected it to, but more perhaps because I am not the only ignorant one out of many.

“Right,” she said. “This is the problem. There’s basically a genocide going on right now, almost as bad as the Holocaust, and no media attention is being given to it, so most people don’t know about it.”

I don’t know about you, but the first thing I thought about when she said “genocide going on right now” is not the Holocaust, but Rwanda. I don’t even know enough about Rwanda to claim knowledge of it at all, other than seeing a few clips and hearing bits and pieces — enough to feel shame. Shame for not knowing. Shame for humanity, that we let these things happen to each other. That we do these things to each other.

Genevive has just posted about Uganda. It is something I did not know anything about either. It doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes to read, so please do.

In addition to that, Genevieve is not the only person who didn’t post on Blog Action Day. In my poor defence, I didn’t receive the email I expected — but that is poor, isn’t it? Yes. It should not have mattered. That will come along later.

In October 2005, I went to Cebu in the Philippines and saw street urchins. I saw people living in rubbish dumps. So much rubbish that you could not see the end of it, and they lived there. They had nowhere else to go.

Shinerama. Agape Street Missions. Berwick (with Smiling Over Sickness). The list could go on and on, but once you take the time to look, the number of causes out there is overwhelming. There are literally millions upon millions of problems around the world. There are tragedies occurring in every country. They happen everywhere. They happen here.

But you don’t have the time to check all these links, to Google all these names, or maybe to even finish reading this, which is really getting longer than the recommended blog post. Putting it under a cut would defy the purpose, though, so I’ll keep going. And even if you do have the time, what are you expected to do? You can’t dedicate yourself to all these causes. It’s just not possible.

It isn’t.

You cannot help everyone. You cannot even do everything you want to do — at least, I can’t. My clubs-shopping fiasco was a result of wanting to help — but I have only so much time and energy. As selfish as this sounds, a lot of it is dedicated to me sorting my own life out. I must eat and I must sleep; I have lessons to learn, and even if I didn’t, even if I lived 24/7 for other people, I would still never help everyone I want to.

So it is true that more often than not, you will have to say no. You will have to weigh up your priorities, and as hard as it may be, you must make a conscious decision to not help someone. It is not an excuse to say: “There isn’t anything I can do about it.” There is always something you can do about anything. Whether it is effective is another reason. But the truth of the matter is, whenever you learn about a problem of some kind and do nothing about it, it is a choice you are making. You are as responsible for what you don’t do as for what you do. You are responsible for what you know.

Don’t let ignorance be your excuse. Do you know how shameful it is to admit I am pretty much unaware of what happens anywhere? I’m not up-to-date with local or global news. And it is something I desperately need to improve on. Here I am, a member of a developed nation with easy access to information. Not only that, I am one of those privileged individuals who is at an institute of tertiary education. And yet I still remain in ignorance. I have no excuse for it. What is the use of me — or any one of us, for that matter — graduating from UBC if all I have is a diploma and no heart?

Please care.

We don’t have the resources to help everyone on our own. But please don’t let that stop you from caring. Choose at least one thing — just one thing — you care about and do something about it. Actively participate in it, whatever it is. If all of us did at least one thing we cared about — something for someone else, or for something other than ourselves — imagine how much could be achieved. That’s really the message behind preventing global warming as well, isn’t it? If we all did a little bit to reduce our contribution to global warming, that would add up to a whole lot more. It’s the same for anything — if we all did something together, we could do so much.

We’re all on this earth together.

Go on pursuing your creative and sportive interests outside of school. They are both so important for your development as a person and for your health. But spend some of your time — and we all do have at least that much to spare — for someone or something beyond yourself, and your everyday surroundings. Stay informed. It’s hard to realize every moment of the day that we are part of a much larger world, but we can realize it some of the time every day.