A friend told me this morning, quite happily, that he has no problem eating in McDonalds. I got quite angry.
Not really for the fact that he ate there, but because he laughed at every single reason I was presenting to him.
But I got even angrier when he didn’t even believe that they have one single provider. I got some one important in McDonalds to tell me this a few years ago. But he didn’t believe me and at one point he just stopped listening, so I took it quite personally, and when things are taken personally usually end up badly.
Any conclusions? Several. The first one is that I am not too good at evangelising, at least not in Spanish and even less among friends. The second one, that it is still healthy to meet “normal” people to remind ourselves that they actually exist (and that they are in the majority!!!) [he he, the boy got offended when he realised that “normal” was referred to him too]. The third one is that, if there is a movement, this movement is doing many things right, but one thing is not too good at and it is to convince people who [think that they] live well, that our life style is what is creating the inhuman injustice of obscene inequality between people who [think that they] live well and people who [try to] live on a dollar a day.
I got on a good car a few weeks ago. It had many things that, not seeing them, we would laugh at them, but once inside one realises why people would do even sacrifices in order to get a [good] new car each year. Windows are open and closed just with the touch of a button – ok, this is nothing new. But what about the windscreen wiper’s speed varying according to the speed of the car, or that the music comes from every corner, or that the seats are more comfortable than my sofa, and moveable, or that the temperature is regulated automatically…
It would be necessary to have some kind of super human capacity to convince the man with a good car to please do without half that luxury to get something as intangible and distant as a family in the other part of the world having as much as a tenth of the dignity in which he is living.
I am convinced that all this has to do with the ability to love that the human being has. Of course, also play a role the experiences to which each person has been exposed and the reflexion that each of those experiences have caused.
My friend tells me to go to Africa if I want to change the world. How convenient – go away, leave me with my luxuries, don’t do my heading and just go somewhere where your nonsense is listened to. What did an Australian indigenous woman tell some ‘saviour’ from a rich country when he asked her what he could do?
Years later another friend told me the same thing. I have not needed to hear it again.
