Sins of Omission

October 18th, 2009

Life isn’t fair, of course.  No one thinks it ought to be.  With the exception, perhaps, of small children.  But they, too, learn quickly that fair isn’t a guarantee, or even a requirement.

Yet, we strive to treat each other fairly.  We strive to balance the gentleness that the Universe has doled out to all.  We remind ourselves to Do Unto Others, and to look out for the weak or the orphaned.

And still, the battle is only ever half fought.  We argue about responsibility and government hand outs.  We fight for our own stake of a little square property we’ve claimed for ourselves.  Never mind from whom we’ve sequestered it, never mind that it was never really ours for the taking.  We tally our cash registers in dollars and cents, leaving only a small tithe to whatever cause we’ve dreamt up as the righteous one.

I struggle with this balance.  What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is ours, right?   It’s so easy to discard all concerns for those in less fortunate situations because all we ever truly see is what we have placed within our own little patch of paradise.  And yet, is it even proper that we consider to venture out beyond these curtains?  Should we concern ourselves with worry when worry never helps anything?  Should we consider our treasures rightfully owned because WE were the ones who visualized them right into our pockets, never mind those who have never figured out how to magically enjoy life?   After all, it must be their own faults.  Just like proselytists who know Jesus, we either share the wealth of our knowledge or we condemn those with less fortunate understandings to the fiery pits of hell, whether be it in this life or after.

And those who stand in pulpits rarely find themselves bathed in the admiration of those who think differently.

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Thick gratitude for my existing status envelopes my heart when I consider living as a woman in any other than the Western culture.   Of course, if you’ve never felt anything other than oppression, you might not consider your life oppressed.  The contrast must surely be the only thing that tells you that what you’re experiencing is less fortunate.  No?

I say this facetiously, because of course fear does not need lack of fear to define itself.  Light does not need darkness to define itself.  Yet, somehow, gratitude might often need contrast of what terrible things you do not have in order to define itself.  Joy and awe might also need desperation or the threat of violence to truly be appreciated.

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I read something today that struck within me this ambiguous mood.  Which is it that we ought to choose?  We look at the social castes within our own culture: the homeless, the addicts, the mentally ill… and collectively, we see them through a lens of disgust and fear.  We see them as the bane of our street safety, or as those cast with a lot significantly less appealing than that of functionality.  Whatever degrading generalization you can slap upon the lower caste, you must, in order to truly appreciate the wealth that has accumulated around you as long as you have food to eat, a car to drive, and a roof to protect you from the cold.  And in turn, instead of holding your hands out to help them up, you promptly wash your hands at the merest thought of touching something they’ve touched before you.  The bars behind the bus seat, the pay phone in the outdoors mall, the bathroom faucet in a fast food restaurant… It’s all contaminated.  Beware, you might catch some of their crazy.  Or their addiction, or inability to play our financial game we have almost all agreed to play in this society.

In the same breath, we shout out, “Thou shalt not provide welfare!  I worked hard for my money!  Food stamps are for sissies!”  We shoulder our taxes and our debts with the utmost pride and hit the end buttons on our cell phones when the bill collectors call.  Hourly.   Because we do not equate those realities between us and them.  They must be worlds apart, those differences.

Simultaneously, we fervently admonish against birth control and abortions– to the same population who cannot feed their babies.  “It is SEX that is the wrong!  Thou shalt not populate if thou hasn’t the means to support them!”

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Life isn’t fair, you’re right about that.  Life isn’t fair because it is WE who are not fair.

Humans are funny creatures.   We fancy ourselves more enlightened, more advanced, because we have the capacity for empathy and compassion, yet in an assault of various acts of self-preservation we turn our faces away from the forlorn.  We strive for cures to diseases and allow ourselves to be starved of our own personal kindness.  We turn to nightly television for companionship lest we catch our neighbor’s madness through association.

We fight wars and build nuclear weapons.   We let our balls tingle over promises of power.  We murder through acts of omission as readily as we do through acts of commission.

It is not the Universe that is unfair.