Changing the World one Life at a time

The environmentalists have an expression, 'think globally act locally'. As it goes I actually don't disagree that much with that. I certainly don't agree with most of their prescriptions, but I think most conservatives and liberals alike want to improve the world we live in. This goes for the environment and the non tangible elements as well.

As I look around at our culture we have become accustomed to a certain amount of creature comforts. We expect to be able to go on vacation to the destination of our choice. We expect to be able to go out to eat if we want. We expect nine gazillion channels on our television for a reasonable price. When we see someone who doesn't have that we think we need something done to make sure that person can do that in short order.

Here is where the left and right move apart. We are so accustomed to these things that it has become unfashionable to ask how to get there. We don't always ask honest questions. Health care is the immediate subject facing us right now. We see millions of people who cannot afford health care insurance at prevailing prices. Now instead of talking about the millions of people that cannot afford health insurance how about one person. OK that is not representative enough, I understand that. Lets take twenty people. First do they all have the same problems? In truth they probably do not. Some may have had children and dropped out of school and not gained the skills necessary to compete in our economic system. Someone else may have developed a substance abuse problem and cannot hold a job. Still another has just lost a job and is going to get another as soon as the economy gets better. Another is young and just doesn't want to pay for insurance they feel they don't need today. Another may not have the problem of cost at al.. Maybe they just want to take the risk and have the means to do so.

You may be saying I have heard this all before. Here is the fresh look. Lets take person one. They poor unfortunate lady who had children in high school and the father abandoned her. After this happened she did her best but just never got around to finishing her high school degree or college. Now let's go back in time. If some person, a parent, a counselor, a pastor, a friend had given her the honest assessment of her future would she have chosen it? By honest assessment I mean when you have that child, and turn to the government, statistics show that you will never be able to go to college, you will never make substantially more than you will today, and you will have very little choice in the direction of your life. Of course these are statistics and they can be wrong in individual instances but for the majority of people these are the realities. If these facts had been given to her would she have chosen to have the baby and raise it or some other choice? One of the choices she could have taken is abortion which I would pray she would not choose. This too has consequences. Her entire life she would wonder what could have become of this never born child. She would have wondered what if she had chosen differently. This is a legal choice but not one without consequences just like all choices.

Let's now say she had been given this information and had chosen to give the baby up for adoption. She would have had her life inconvenienced for the time she was pregnant and would still have the future of wondering where the child is, what the child believes about its mother and all the similar questions. Once again consequences. Now let's go back even farther. Every parent tries to have the talk with their children about sex. Instead of just telling them that premarital sex is wrong and don't do it, what if they knew all they statistics we spoke of. What if they volunteered at a battered women's shelter for a time. What if she went to a homeless shelter and saw all of the lives that hadn't turned out the way the people planned. Would she have chosen a different life? Maybe or maybe not, but we don't know because we lump her in with all of the other people who are nothing but statistics that we use to make our political point.

How about the other people we looked at above. Is there a conversation we could have had for them as well to give them an honest assessment of their future? I think there might be. My children are nine and five years old. I plan to have these conversations. It will still be their choices but at least they will have the long term consequences laid out to them. Shouldn't we start treating the 'poor', the 'disadvantaged', the 'less fortunate' as individuals and not a group? I guess the question comes down to do we want to feel good about ourselves or actually make a difference? You can't make a difference for a group without making a difference for an individual. There will be things that happen that we cannot avoid, untimely deaths, killer tornadoes and Hurricanes. Wouldn't it be nice to reduce the avoidable personal tradgedies? We have always had cases of all these people I talked about, the degree of occurrance is the new phenomena. We may not be able to avoid all of them, but we can reduce them, one life at a time.