A mother separated from her missing husband flees a war-torn country, her homeland, to provide a brighter future for her children. She\u2019s a dentist by training and practiced dentistry\u00a0back home;\u00a0but here, here\u00a0she\u2019s cleaning homes for a living. Why? When she left her home with her four children by her side, headed to a safer place, to America,\u00a0what was in her suitcase? Alongside the picture of her missing husband and the few possessions that remained after the destruction of her home, in her suitcase, she has hopes and dreams, fears and doubts. She looks to her children for strength, but she\u2019s terrified every time she looks them in their eyes. She is not optimistic, but she is hopeful; she looks the odds straight in the face and proceeds anyway. Because hope is not logical, it is powerful.<\/p>\n
She’s cleaning the home of a happy family; the father is an engineer and the mother is a doctor and the children play piano. Their life, their hopes, goals and dreams are\u00a0dependent on the stability of their country, but they cannot see it. The same hands that used to place crowns to relieve the pain of the suffering are now scrubbing the floor of another woman\u2019s bathroom. But hope is powerful, and she lives through the dreams of her children. Two of her daughters want to be doctors. Her third daughter wants to be an artist. Her son is eight and he loves math.\u00a0In her suitcase, she brought with her the dream of a better education for her children. \u201cIn Syria, we ate grass. In Egypt, we didn\u2019t have food. In Indiana, I love school.\u201d These are the words of her eight-year-old son.<\/p>\n
A man runs to catch the bus. He can\u2019t miss the interview; he really needs this job. It is his third interview in as many days. His last job got him enough money to get his family off the streets for a couple weeks. But motels are more expensive than he ever imagined. He\u2019s homeless. His family is homeless.\u00a0This wasn\u2019t a possibility he considered when he graduated with his MBA. He had a great job, but the hurricane took everything away. And he hasn\u2019t been able to get back on his feet. He catches the bus and pays the $1.75 in quarters. He\u00a0checks the email that\u00a0he printed; the interview is\u00a0in room 4015. He runs up the stairs; he really hates being late. As he enters his\u00a0interviewer\u2019s room, a bead of sweat runs down his forehead. What\u2019s in that bead of\u00a0sweat?\u00a0Desperation and nervousness, humiliation and self-pity, purpose and resilience.<\/p>\n
His interviewer gives him the job offer. He smiles and shakes his head. A tear runs down his face. He\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0take the job; he\u00a0can\u2019t manage the branch that makes most of its revenue through alcohol sales. Another day and another interview, but his\u00a0family remains homeless. He needs the job, but rejecting the offer was an easy decision. He believes that although alcohol may have small benefits to\u00a0people and society, the harm it causes is much larger than its benefits, and wants to play no part in its distribution; he will not be a co-creator in\u00a0the intoxication of his neighbor’s mind.<\/p>\n
A young woman sinks into herself on the examination table. Her husband is holding, squeezing her hand. The doctor is still talking. He looks very sympathetic. The young woman just learned that she has a cancer growing inside of her lungs, an aggressive cancer. The doctor thinks \u2018we can fight it.\u2019 The young woman\u2019s mind is overwhelmed into quietness. All she can think about is her daughter\u2019s play after school that she doesn\u2019t want to miss, even for this. The doctor brings her back,\u00a0\u2018Do you feel comfortable about our next step? I think that\u2019s the best place for us to start.\u2019 The young woman shrugs. What is in that shrug? Fear and uncertainty, peace and tranquility, ambivalence,\u00a0a need for normalcy, a desire for time to make meaning.<\/p>\n
The young woman is herself a physician,\u00a0trained and licensed as a radiologist.\u00a0She knows enough about cancer and the late stage\u00a0non-small cell lung cancer she has been diagnosed with to know that the longevity of her future has been called into question. And yet this is not the topic of discussion with the doctor. Instead, he discusses\u00a0treatment options, which is fancy talk for a long list of big words in different orders and combinations. When asked about the next step, she shrugged. She shrugged because there didn\u2019t seem to be room for her in that room. (Insert young woman with terminal cancer here).\u00a0Although it is more comfortable for the doctor to rattle off treatment options, the patient wants to take time to acknowledge the inexorability of our life cycle.\u00a0To the doctor, it was the end of a beginning, and they were, together, supposed to begin a new chapter of strength and resilience. While he rattled off treatment options,\u00a0she just wanted to catch her daughter’s play after school, and she was running late.<\/p>\n
In the\u00a0words of HL Menken,\u00a0\u2018For every human problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0Without\u00a0taking a moment to explore\u00a0what’s inside the immigrant’s suitcase, the homeless man\u2019s bead of sweat, the sick young woman\u2019s shrug, we stand a sorry chance to witness, help, and learn from\u00a0ordinary people with the will to do extraordinary things. This is the power of narratives; the power of listening.\u00a0I call myself to look inside the suitcase, to investigate the bead of sweat, and to ask about the shrug; I call myself to listen.<\/p>\n
I find\u00a0myself in an imperfect world, full of injustice and oppression. I find myself an imperfect man perfectly given\u00a0the ability to alleviate suffering, on a personal level with a smile or a hug, and on a larger\u00a0scale by fighting\u00a0injustice and refusing to stand\u00a0idly in the face of oppression.\u00a0Poverty belongs in a history museum. And hunger…we have enough food in the world for every member of the human family to eat a balanced 3000 calorie meal. When we eliminate poverty and hunger, there\u00a0will be\u00a0many other injustices for us to face. I want to make facing these injustices my mission. My mission is to be\u00a0\u2018human\u2019 as\u00a0best I can;\u00a0to work to establish\u00a0justice in any capacity that I can, from a generously given smile to an honest political campaign.<\/p>\n