Have a Heaping Helping of Thanksgiving With A Pinch of Guilt

As most Americans move from the table to the television, I hope all of you have given sincere thanks for your many blessings, but I hope you have a added just a pinch of healthy guilt to your full stomach.

Many, many Americans (and non-Americans) are suffering greatly, not just today, but everyday. It doesn’t matter if it’s the homeless on the streets of Downtown Lubbock or on the savannahs of Sudan, people are suffering, while we are full, warm, entertained and sadly, oblivious.

Thinking that guilt should not apply to them, more Americans and Lubbockites (than I care to admit) will shrug this message off—“Hey, well, I don’t feel very bad for those people, some of them have made bad choices and besides, I have a right to this, I’ve worked hard, saved, and led a good life and besides I give to my church to give to those people”.

“Those people”…that’s the term that makes me cringe.

But for the Grace of God, go I. Think about where you began your life—much of your success can be attributed to being born with advantages—good infant health, two parents (or one really committed strong parent), an education, access to good health care as a child, and continued good health far into your working years.

“Those people” may not have been a "lucky sperm of month club" or a "winning egg in the ovarian lottery" as Warren Buffett so aptly puts it—YOU, either by chance of birth or by geography, by DNA, by religion, by gender, could be one of “those people”. By chance, you could have been born in the poorest slum in Mexico or the outbacks of Tasmania, or the thick forests in Jakarta.

I don't know if many of you realize it, but your grasp on prosperity is tenuous, very tenuous. If you got lucky with your birth circumstance, you may not have fared so well with your “happenstance”. You might have begun life with a lucky beginning, but perhaps worked in an occupation that made you sick, or fought in a war that took your limbs, or your livelihood was downsized and you couldn’t find work and you used alcohol or drugs to take away the pain of your loss. Unlucky, unlucky, unlucky…with a mere toss of the dice, you might be one of “those people”—in a soup kitchen today instead of your stainless steel kitchen.

In my thirty years of work in education, where most of my “customers” were those in dire socioeconomic straits—I can’t think of a single one that WANTED, really wanted to be in the situation they found themselves. They truly didn’t know the path to get out. That’s where YOU come in.

Helping out the disenfranchised doesn’t mean throwing money at the problem, it means building bonds with “those people”. That’s what “those people” need most—the unconditional positive regard of those in other places. They need someone to convince them that they are not “those people”, the losers, the underbelly of the world—some strange American equivalent to an “untouchable” caste.

Guilt is a negative emotion, but some times guilt is an effective motivator in getting people off the couch and out into the world of “those people”.