I’m so tired of how hard it is to do good in this world of lining coffins with pennies. Sorry for any errors, I’m sick and on the long end of a deployment.
So last year in an effort to try and create some personal balance and decrease the likelihood I’ll eat the end of a gun before I’m 40 I started volunteering with a large NGO doing disaster relief.
It’s really amazing work and incredibly fulfilling. I’ve been able to deploy 3 times now and can’t imagine a world where I’m not heavily involved in some kind of humanitarian relief effort. It shows me tangible evidence that there is a strong force for good out there even if it’s often outshined by the bad. There are lots of good people wanting to make a difference, and they are.
This organization is also critical inside of staffing disaster relief operations because the fed and state emergency management systems are so broken and underfunded. If NGOs just stopped doing what they do, it would be chaos in even a small scale event. Most of the work, with the smallest amount of credit.
I go out to places truly decimated by natural and humanitarian disasters for a few weeks to a month, and then home to a world where I do home renovations for the ultra wealthy. I watch my credit card debt stay (if I’m doing it right) the same because I take time off to go and deploy and come to make multi-million dollar houses look nicer so they can be occupied at most a month a year by people who have never had to and will never worry about money.
This juxtaposition is a strange thing to witness and not become even more bitter. I wish we lived in a society that funded and valued the safety nets they assume will be there when they need it. The working class has somehow been tricked into believing they aren’t one disaster, one medical emergency, away from needing help that wouldn’t be there without volunteers taking a personal hit in providing it.
I’d by lying if I said I haven’t thought hard about reallocating some of this hoarded wealth so I can go out more and not at a personal loss but it’s not worth the risk.
We live in a house of cards and it’s gettin breezy. Be good to those around you and help when ya can. Thanks for letting me vent.