We live in a world no short of crisis, tragedy, misfortune, and mishap. I have never doubted that. Then again, I have no key to its comprehensive entirety. Like anyone else riding with me in this public bus today, I have some observable morsel of clue to their lives, as they probably would mine, but beyond that, I have no reasonable idea.
I’ve met people. These are stories I have never imagined before stepping foot into the Action for AIDS office- the stories of the affected and the infected, of those who live with three letters that have no known cure. HIV. AIDs. I have overheard, met, listened, peeped- the last time I heard, it was a boy no more than 17. It’s more complex than losing a limb, much darker than living through a stroke. The irretrievable lots they have been assigned to, for life. Chained, to themselves, to the growing demands of their bodies, burdened on a secondly basis to the material costs of keeping themselves alive. This is a disease that strikes hard- it captures a vulnerable human, it proceeds to not only disarm a body’s natural immunity, it mutates proteins, it mutates the images of which the human has worked to acquire. It causes you to question your social support system; it tests your ability to tolerate living in a community. This is a condition that eats away at a person’s sense of self-worth. We will be hard-pressed to find another medical condition that will necessitate such an alarming level of blame, shame and hate in this century.
What does it mean to work for a cause? Does it blind rationality? Does it make me champion the minority- a view of the hackneyed – compelling but ultimately one that runs separate and parallel to the mainstream consciousness? Do I lose when I seek to find, accumulate and catalogue, live with –all probable reasons to give- and then can islanded in my grand canyon of purpose, with a bunch who declare no beneficial similarities to me?
I cannot afford to grow insular in growing my own passions for the cause. Just as there are typhoons and floods, wars and broken families, this cause exists as a particular unit of plight amidst the others. There must be a way to make one’s help to all these, non-exclusive. If everyone gave to the world’s problems, surely the problems would not only be solved at its best efforts, but diluted? Sure, granted this is impossible because we all live in individual realities as opposed to collective communal consensus- than surely the next best step is to find a way for people to quantify the efforts they contribute to live in this world?
We live in a world no short of crisis, tragedy, misfortune, and mishap. This is un-true unless you inhabit all whose lives you deem needy, unfortunate – ‘charity cases’. Until you become one. But such foresight is impossible. So it’s my job to make you try.
