Perspective

Disclaimer: I am well aware that there are people living in real poverty in the UK, including in Surbiton. This post is not me being blind to that, or suggesting that a few pounds do not make a real difference to those people.

I had one of those times this week where my separate worlds collided with a great big emotional jolt.

I spent the early part of the week doing assessments of new areas for my teams to work in. In one town, the river runs through the middle. One side is ISIS, the other side has been re-taken from them. On the re-taken side every single family is hosting people displaced from the other bank. Every family is sharing the very little they have with another family, often with multiple families. And they are not complaining. They know what it is like to live under ISIS rule, and so when their neighbours risk their lives crossing the river under the cover of darkness to escape them, they open their homes to them without question. I sat on the floor in a house bare of furniture and listened to stories of ISIS torture, of escape, of return to the remains of property that had been looted by ISIS. It’s been 2 and a half years and yet I’m still shocked by the brutality of ISIS. I asked what conditions were believed to be like on the other side of the river. As we heard the bullets in the distance, they talked of how the people who had been smuggling food across to try and ease the suffering of those caught on the wrong side have been stopped by the military and so they are no longer able to provide that small assistance.

Later in the week, back in the office, I was reading a report on the conditions in Western Mosul. The army is making good progress to re-capture the city, but as they do so, the poorest neighbourhoods are facing siege-like conditions. Food is scarce, prices are rising daily, safe water is unavailable, and ISIS are going house to house carrying out 'inspections' where they take what little food people still have stored. It's a bleak picture, hard to read about; imagine how much harder to actually live in those conditions. Not only are you in fear for your life, but you also can't feed your children.

About an hour later I was on facebook and came across a video from Tescos in Surbiton (my old neck of the woods). They had done the daily price reductions and there was the most horrifying scrum for the bargains. Watching it, I just felt so sick. There's nothing wrong with a bargain. There's nothing wrong with avoiding food waste by reducing prices. But when people in Surbiton (one of the wealthiest parts of England, and therefore the world) are physically fighting over saving a few pounds, there is something very, very wrong with our perspectives.

I don't know what the answer to this is. This kind of sense of entitlement seems to be the poison of my generation. Where is the tipping point between enjoying the good things in life but not at the cost of other's? We can't, and shouldn't, live our lives in continual guilt about what we have because of where we were born. But we can live our lives intentionally informing ourselves about the circumstances others are facing because of where they were born. We can make decisions which go some way to re-balancing the world. We can choose to give our time, money, skills to make a difference to someone else. We each have to find that sweet spot where we live life to the full; but where part of that fullness of life is brought about by serving the needs of others, standing up against injustice, looking after this amazing planet, showing kindness and generosity.