"It has been a long time since I came to your counter" I told her with a smile. "With you being all possessive, I didn't want you to get upset with me" I added.
She laughed and tapped on my hand. "Yes, I get jealous sometimes" she chuckled.
The previous customer, a woman who had more than a decade on me, was collecting her bags. She paused and said "I know I cannot go by any other counter if I come here with my grandkids."
"So, how are things?" I asked her while she scanned the groceries.
"They have me down to four days a week" she replied.
Now that I am older and wiser, I know enough not to assume that anything that people say is good or bad, and that it is better to ask for clarification. I suppose I have been reading one too many old parables!
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Oh, very bad thing." She paused. "I can't live on 300 dollars a week."
I had no idea how to respond to that. Fortunately for me, she continued. And, as always, she used humor as a cover.
"I guess I will have to stand at street corners and ask for money" and she laughed.
That was a couple of hours ago. I am trying to make my peace with her situation.
With her situation alone, and then about the many, many others who are in her state.
In the US, what I earn will place me in the upper middle class income. If I compare myself to the world, I know I am one of the top one percent of the world. When she tells me about living on 300 dollars a week, I am easily sent on the guilt trip that I have been traveling right from my young age.
I have no idea how others make their own peace on these kinds of issues. For me, it has been one heck of a struggle.
Yes, there are all those intellectual battles that I can engage in. Even the Pope and the President have recently weighed in on these income issues, and I have been so tempted to blog about those. But, there is a wide gulf between the intellect and the emotion.
As I noted in that essay from almost a decade ago, "perhaps academic life means a continuous attempt to redraw the line that separates what I teach from how I live."
4 comments:
I think about the same thing a lot of times and feel guilty about it. Being in India where the contrasts are far more often and far more stark it kind of bothers you.
I still remember me and the wife went to a nice place and ordered a good meal. The final bill which was presented for two was more than we paid our house maid for a month. I still am not able to shrug that thought out of my mind.
Methinks there is a wider gulf between intellect and action. For the "solution", I need to look no further than Bill Gates. Give away the riches, and donate my time and energy. But then, I am not Bill Gates and therefore find it difficult to put the intellect into action. I can, but , try .........
Truly, Bill Gates is the epitome of what to do. Not Warren Buffet, who has also given it away, but Bill Gates. Actually both Bill and Melinda Gates.
I suspect that it is relatively easier to give away one's money when you have that much money. If we exclude those kinds of way-out-there outliers, and instead look at the vast majority of us, who fit into the pattern, then the issue is immensely complex. (Not that I don't applaud the work that the Gates couple does, or what Bufett does .. )
We are three of us commenting here because we think about such issues on our own. While our respective actions might vary, I am confident that what we do comes after some thought into this. There are lots more like us, yes. The world will be a much better place if more people thought about all these ... my suspicion is that they don't, and prefer not to ... :(
@Sriram - Actually it is easier to give when you don't have too much. Its actually harder when you have a lot - the percentage of wealth donated I suspect disproportionate to the quantum of wealth. That is because the feeling of "enough" I think, diminishes with rising income. That is why I believe that Bill Gates' actions are those of a Saint. Sure he is an outlier. But he is an example for all of us to follow.
I have a feeling that in life, you need a "tragedy" to make you think. If all goes relatively well, man tends to sink into a thoughtless existence. Its people who face great hardship, who rise to the highest levels of thought and action. Isn't it an irony - the objective of Utopia could be the biggest curse of all.
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