Rethinking the "work" I do

A lot of people have been responding to my emails I have been sending out, and I recently got a note back from a very dear friend and teacher of mine, who said, "I love to see how you reveal deeper and deeper layers of Indian culture,grounding your revelations in details of the glaring contradictions thatare omnipresent everywhere in India. But don't forget that they are here, too. Remember how Jonathan Kozolbegins his book, Savage Inequalities: step on a subway in the upper EastSide, wealthiest congressional district in the U.S., ride just 7 stopsand get off in the South Bronx, the poorest cong.district in America. Thedisparities of wealth that you describe brilliantly there exist in NYC.They are of course more massive in India, given the degrees of povertyand the huge population, but the dramatic contrasts are still apparent." (DD, 17 July 2008).

And I started to think, and talk about it with some fellow workers here in India. I came to India because I thought the problems here were so much worse than in America, that the problems in other parts of the wprld were somehow more pressing and more real. There is certainly an issue of scale- India does have 4 times as many people as does the United States, and its economy is not as strong as many other countries around the world. India faces an pandemic array of public health challenges, everything from accessing potable water to malaria and HIV/AIDS to inadequate opportunities for childhood and adult education. However, DD's comment made me think. There are pressing problems in all of our countries- serious problems that compromise people's abilities to live full, equal, and honest lives. DD is 100% accurate to say that these problems are glaring within a short distance of one of the world's premiere cities, and the problems of accessing basic services, issues of social and economic inequality, and injustice unfortunately exist all around us.

The work any of us do, in any part of the world, that helps people improve their quality of life, is meaningful and important. Working with kids in the South Bronx in afterschool theatre programs, bringing health care to the Appalacian Mountains, being a teacher, making people happy, helping women create economic opportunities for themselves, being a social worker, are just a few of a million things we can do to improve this world, and your location makes your work no more and no less important- I am coming to understand it is the people we help that is important. Wherever there are social injustices, no matter how great or small, attention paid to individuals makes the difference.

I hope this makes sense. It is just a thought I have been tossing around lately, and look forward to your comments.