As I reflected on the quote and shared it with a friend, I found myself wondering how much I personally care about other people's children, especially those I will never meet, in the situations I'd rather not even think of.
I shared the quote with one of my friends and her first response was "I don't think it's the most important thing you have to do, but it is our responsibility as human beings to take care of other human beings." My friend said that her family, her kids, and her life do come first. If there is an issue or emergency in your family you definitely take care of that first, before you seek to help the other children of the world. I conversationally asked her what she personally does to help those other human beings and she said she participates in fundraisers, she supports charities, etc.
Her response was basically what I expected. I'll be the first one to admit I often do put myself and my needs ahead of others' need. I think that as much as it is in our human nature to care for others, it's also in our nature to want to look our for our own selfs first. I think most people would have a similar response: they recognize the world our there need us, and it's our responsibility to change it and take care of it, but for the most part we don't go beyond our comfort zone to partake in that responsibility. Tying in with what we have discussed before, I think the reason this happens (a realization without action) is because a lot of times the issues are close to home, it's far away and it doesn't affect us personally. It's not until it affects us personally, someone close to us, or a neighbor, like Virgina's neighbor who died, that we take that extra step toward the change.
The good thing is programs like SLICE and even the honors forum at PVCC give the students involved the knowledge, courage, and means to make that first step!
I totally agree with your perspective vanessa. It owes homage to the phrase "if a tree falls in the woods and no one heard it, did the tree ever fall?" I know I became involved in the community after hearing about the issues in my neighborhood, but it's this involvement that branches out to help others we don't know. On our team we are helping refugees from Somalia which is on another continent and it feels great!
ReplyDeleteVanessa,
ReplyDeleteyou're exactly right. When you asked your friend you kind of already knew the response you were going to get: family and friends come first and the community and world come second. That is a completely logical way of handling individual priorities. Mostly, I think this heirarchy of who to help stems from how we are raised and what influences each of us to make decisions.
So the responsibility of spreading the news about public issues ultimately falls on us: the people who are informed of the issues. That way we can increase our support.