Post date: May 9, 2017 1:39:25 AM
In a truly enlightening book I am reading by Cardinal Dolan, our Archbishop, an idea very foreign to our culture is elaborated upon through the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Russian Nobel Prize in Literature winner, after years under Soviet oppression, preached that:
“The great heresy of modernity is to believe that progress, prosperity, health, and happiness are the ordinary, expected conditions of life, and that… frustration, boredom, sickness, pain, setbacks, and struggles are flaws, failures, and glitches that must be avoided and from which we must escape at all costs.”
Read that again. One of the most valuable gifts I received from traveling to Peru was recognizing and better understanding the truth in a statement such as this one.
Something that hit me after climbing to the top of a ridge in Lima, looking out into the vast expanse of shanties and dust and not being able to see where the speckled mountains ended, was how real the lives people living there are. They know they have meager belongings – that the gringo looking at them is “better off” than they are financially. But unlike in our society where seeing a person richer than you is meant to make you want to be like them – to have what they have and to act like they act; that you are “lesser” than they are for not being like them, the materially poor tend to accept what they have and take pride in it, and, while still working incredibly hard to make better lives for their families, they make no big deal out of things that truly and simply aren’t. That’s not to say they don’t want to have more comfortable lives, but it is to say they know that life is not about comfort. They do not have the luxury to cover up every “undesirable” thing in their lives, yet the list of what exactly fits in that category is magnitudes smaller for them than it is for us.
This lack of superficiality is at the core of what I mean by “real.” Where is there room for superficiality when each day is its own mountain to climb (literally and figuratively), finding unskilled work and feeding your family with the 3 dollars you make? Now bring the idea back home: does it make you any more joyful that you wear the latest brand names, have ten pairs of sneakers and 1,000 followers on Twitter? How about if you had eleven pairs of sneakers? Any better? I don’t think so. I can say confidently that the Peruvian people don’t think so either. Not to romanticize poverty, but from what I have experienced in their country, it is family, community, and ultimately a person’s friendship with God that brings joy and lasting happiness – not the fleeting pleasures of the moment. I will never forget the mother of a family we helped, who in tears said, “I thank your parents for letting you come to help us, thank you for all you have done, and thank God.” Yet she also helped us, just not in a material way; staying with them was like getting our “perception windshield” wiped to a simpler and more pure view of the world.
So I give YOU personally a challenge: try to live life outside of the mold – the image to which society tells us we need to conform. Look at your daily choices and deny yourself little things throughout the day – prove to yourself you are bigger than just the kinds of things you own, where you’re from, or the amount of friends you have. Finally, ask yourself: who really are the richest in the world?
- Jack Kristensen ‘18