Tag: Changing lives

A Letter to My Sons: Three Questions

Dear Alexandre, Dear Sam,


Last week I spoke to some university students about poverty. Only a few students showed up, but when I think back to my days at university, I probably wouldn’t have gone to any talk about poverty. As I struggled to think of what to say to them, I thought back to a book Mommy read to you a couple of years ago: The Three Questions. In the book, a young boy goes on a journey to find answers to three questions. He finds the answers he needs by meeting friends along his journey.


These are the questions the boy asks:
Do good for the person next to you, now. That’s it.
  1. When is the best time to do things?
  2.  Who is the most important one?
  3.  What is the right thing to do?

 

As he nears his journey’s end, one of his friends offers these answers: “Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side.  For these, my dear boy, are the answers to what is most important in this world.”


I never thought of these three questions before reading this book – at least not the way the boy asked them. By the time I finished university, the question I asked myself – which I never really shared with anyone – was “Is this all there is?” And by “this” I basically meant the life I was leading and the purpose I had for being on this earth. The answer was simple enough: “No.” But that kind of answer didn’t tell me what I should be doing.


I found some answers to what I should be doing by seeing more of the world. As I began to travel I realized that there was so much of the world that lived a harder life than mine. Before traveling, I’d seen images of poor people on TV, but that was the extent of the poverty I faced. The more I learned about the world, the more I realized not everyone went to school, not everyone lived in a nice house, not everyone had enough food to eat, not everyone had enough clean water to drink, not everyone was healthy, not everyone felt safe and secure.


The more I saw of the world, the more I hurt. The more I thought of that question – Is this all there is? – the more I felt I should do something.  Like the boy in the story, I learned that the time to do things was right now. Not later, not when I felt like it, not when the world would get better because it wasn’t. There was no waiting, it was just now. As for the answer to the boy’s second question: “the most important person is always the one you are with.” The one next to you. Nowadays many people will tell you that the world is a lot smaller. Our phones, computers, airplanes, and other technology have brought many of us closer together. If this is the case, then isn’t it true that the person “next to you” can be anyone in the world? The answer to the third question is to “do good for the one who is standing at your side.” In an increasingly smaller world, this means you can do good for anyone, anywhere.


But there comes a point when you have to make choices. I decided long ago to try to help people in many places, and that’s what still takes me away from you. Before leaving a few days ago, you asked again, “Why do you have to leave?” Leaving you is hard for me, harder than you can imagine. But as much as my love for you compels me to stay home and be with you all the time, the same three questions the young boy asks himself are always on my mind. The answers to the boy’s questions also compel me to “do good,” or at least try to help others. Whether you “do good” by teaching kids in school like Mommy, or by becoming a Lego Master or a rock star/dog babysitter like you want to be one day, you end up making others happy, and you’ll make a difference in this world.


Je t’aime Alexandre, Je t’aime Sam.
Daddy

A Letter to My Sons, Part 2: Uncivil War

Dear Alexandre, Dear Sam,


I’ve been in Sri Lanka for almost a day now, and have managed to stay awake despite having only a few hours sleep last night. The hotel I’m staying at is called the Grand Oriental Hotel, and like most hotels I’ve been to, the pictures on the website make the place look better than it actually is. There’s an expression that goes, “Nothing to write home about,” and as a result I will not describe my club sandwich to you. There’s a nice view of the port from the restaurant, but I can’t show you a picture of what it looks like because there’s a sign saying “NO PICTURES NO VIDEO.” I looked more closely at the port and there are navy ships with the occasional soldier walking around with a rifle slung over his shoulder. I guess they don’t want people taking pictures of their war toys.


Speaking of war, this hotel was designed to be an army barracks for British soldiers back in 1837; that’s a place where soldiers live. My room is probably where at least a dozen soldiers slept every night in cramped, hot conditions. Looking at it that way, I shouldn’t complain. If you’re wondering why the British had soldiers in Sri Lanka to begin with, that’ll have to be a story for another time. Remind me to talk to you about colonialism and slavery one day.


Sri Lanka is an island country, called Ceylon when I was a baby, and it is only recently coming out of a long, drawn-out war. Back when I was a teenager, some people living in the northern part of the island formed a group called the Tamil Tigers. They were a group that wanted to have an independent state that was separate from the rest of the country. The Tigers wanted to push the government into accepting this idea of a free state, and did some violent things like explode bombs, but the government did not want to listen. So a war broke out, and when a war happens in the same country (instead of between countries), it’s called a “civil war.” Remember one of my best songs on Guitar Hero, Welcome to the Jungle? The band, Gun ‘n Roses, came out with a song called Civil War, and in it they ask, “What’s so civil about war, anyway?”


It’s a question that seems to have an obvious answer. Before I left on this trip, I told you there had been a war here, but I did not give details. The reality is that around 100 000 people died in this war from its beginning in 1983 until it ended last year. It’s a number so big that it is hard to imagine. And it’s just as hard to imagine living through this war – any war – and not having your spirits, your will to live, your happiness, your love, all trampled upon and shattered by the pain caused from losing friends and family.


When I was your age, my mother, your Grandmaman, used to read a lot of books about the Second World War. The first time I asked her to tell me about the war I could see a profound sadness in her eyes. I never forgot what she said to me. She told me of the things that took place in “concentration camps,” where some bad people took innocent men, women and children and they ruined a lot of lives. It was after the Second World War when people from around the world said “This is enough. We can’t let something like this happen again.” And that’s when people came up with documents like the Convention on the Rights of the Child I wrote about in my last letter.


Unfortunately, a document that says everyone has rights does not mean that people will live their lives that way. Wars still continue all over the world today. There was a lot of violence a few years ago in Rwanda, where many people were killed. People who survived that ordeal have lived to tell others about it, not because they want others to feel bad, but to remind them that violence of any kind should not be tolerated, ever. Today we had a meeting with Sri Lankans who were part of our training program at John Abbott College (the one where both of you helped out). We asked them to describe their best memory of their time at the college. One man, Aruna said the person who left the biggest impression on him was a woman from Rwanda who spoke about living through the violence, even though some soldiers did bad things to her in her home while her children were in another room. Sometimes it takes the words, the actions, or the courage of a single person to affect our lives, or to give us the clarity we need to make us better persons. Another person we met today, Ermiza, told us the story of an army officer she bumped into after having trained him the year before on human rights. He told her that whenever he saw people on the street protesting against something, he used to break up the crowd by driving through it. That’s right: he’d jump into his vehicle and force them to break up by driving into them. After his training on human rights, he thought to himself, These people have the right to say what they want, so I’ll let them do that. And so he stopped driving into them. Sounds like a little change, but I’m sure the people who were not run over by him are happy he thought of their rights for once.


Sometimes it takes just one person to change lives. You’ll find those people in the unlikeliest places, at the most improbable times, in school or on the street or on TV or at the pool. Find them out, hear what they have to say, and by all means, be such a person to others as well.
 


Je t’aime Alexandre, je t’aime Sam, bonsoir.
 
Daddy