We Forget

It’s easy to forget.  I forget all the time and go about my day without a care in the world. We drive to the grocery store. We open our windows to listen to the birds and to welcome the cool breeze in.  We sort through the mail, both paper and electronic.  We sip our tea on the deck and read a good book. We drive to soccer practice. We talk with friends about their new house.  We forget sometimes.

We do.

We forget.

I turned on the news this morning while I was folding towels and the picture that filled the screen was a black smokey sky and armed young people walking around a 15 foot cement wall smiling because they might be free from a world that has not been kind to them their entire lives.  Rebels in Libya have taken control of Gadhafi’s compound.

Can you imagine?

I cannot.

We live in such a beautiful country and yes, we have our many problems; homelessness, veteran care, healthcare issues, unemployment, and the list goes on and on, but, we are generally safe and secure in our homes and everyday lives.   We have so much to be thankful for.  We, as a society, follow the rules, have clean water available at any moment, walk the streets with our families without fear or worries and have luxuries so many other nations only dream about.  

photo credit

I feel for countries wanting their freedom to come and go, to enjoy sitting by the lake  with their family and friends, to educate their children, to buy the food they need, to read the books they want to read.  The list is long.

It’s easy to forget all that we have in this wonderful country.  The surplus of everything.  We get upset when we can’t download the school supply list on our iphones in an instant.  We complain when we have to pay more to fill up our luxury cars.  We forget.  

We forget there are people waking up to gunfire, to no running water, to a five mile walk to the nearest school that only has dirt for a floor and one soccer ball for 56 children.  We forget there are people who cannot download their favorite book to their e-reader.  We forget there are people who don’t even know what an e-reader is.

  

We simply need to be more gracious, more grateful, more kind, more giving to those we come in contact with every day.   We cannot forget.  We cannot.