Organized religion has done it for centuries. Justifying the genocide of entire groups of people who they consider 'Thems'. Political alliances have drawn lines to keep those who are right separated from those who are left. The rich and the poor, the educated from the less educated. Seniors from Juniors and juniors from sophmores and freshmen. The pretty ones from the unattractive ones. We draw lines to make sure everybody knows their place, where they belong. It keeps us nestled in our comfort zones without intrusions and interferences.
Then I come along. Jim Killon from Baltimore Maryland replanted in the Peruvian Andes with a Vision to help poor children, destitute children, kids who live in adobe houses, suffering from anemia,malnutrition, without a shot in hell to ever have a life that comes close to what you might even consider dismally bland. And I smell your fear, I feel your apathy. I see the lines you are drawing to separate Us from You. I am crumbling the walls and chipping away at your apathy. I melt your excuses and make you aware that something isn't right. Do you resent me? Will you draw a line between you and I? I am from where you are now, but I left it.
I am asking you to care. Maybe just a little bit for now, but you need to care.
I am letting you know that my life was much like yours, probably even more comfortable, more luxurious, more apathetic. I had my own walls built and my own lines I drew, years ago before I realized a dreadful truth. My apathy was an exercise in dying. It wasn't protecting me from anything, but my walls and lines were incarcerating me from compassion, love, and the joy that comes from erasing the lines and joining hands to become one with those who were different from me.
Apathy is NOT a neutral position. Your heart has to shut down, those walls need to close off the parts of you that crave to dream and feel and experience what true humanitarians have known for years. The pure love and joy that comes from sharing, being part of solutions, finding answers. That is living, real living. Apathy is dying. Like a person having a heart attack who does not get oxygen and blood to the heart and parts of it simply die. No longer complete.
Apathy is painful. The human spirit wants to reach out and connect to other humans without regard to differences. Differences are learned behaviors. Differences are what the lines and walls are made of. Differences, if you want to know a secret, are ugly. Compassion is beautiful. Compassion feels good. Our brains secret enzymes and hormones when we are compassionate. It is a factual matter of simple biology, our primal nature. The lines and walls are contrary to everything we are as humans. I am here to share with you the beauty and joy of a life, free of those walls and lines. And the lies they insidiously represent to you.
I have been in Peru almost six years helping poor kids in destitution, with the help of some compassionate friends, here and abroad, very few friends mind you. Friends who have learned the secret of living, who have abandoned dying, abandoned apathy and touched the lives of children who they may never meet but they know those kids will be forever grateful. They have joined hands, opened hearts and bonded in a way that is inexplicable to those locked in their apathy. These friends are the fully alive. They have found purpose, reason for their lives and a sense of mission. And if you ask them, they will tell you that their lives will never be the same.
There is no neutral ground. We are busy being fully alive or we are slowly dying. Hell is not beneath our feet yawning for our souls. It is the rotting in our hearts and we create excuse after rationalization not to care. It is the feeling that we get when justifications are made for the lines, the walls we build as destitute children continue to suffer. Our heads never meet our hearts, that is what hell is, if you want to know the truth. The late great comedian George Carlin said it best, "Trying to find satisfaction in life by buying more stuff is like taping sandwiches to your body to satisfy hunger."
This is not leading up to a grand gesture to ask you to donate to Changes for New Hope. Donate, don't donate, it is up to you. Write a post card with a message of compassion to the children, everything is an opening in the walls , an erasing of the lines of separation. It is a rejuvenation of your heart. The elimination of hell. The beginning of what life is supposed to mean to humans. I experience this joy everyday. I have no lines, no walls, no hell to contend with. I am free. Love without lines or walls and hundreds of happy children join me. Can you imagine a more beautiful life to wake up to everyday? Let me tell you, it sure beats the hell out of gassing up the BMX to sit in my office staring at a computer screen watching my 10,000 shares of KMX that I shorted wobble as I sweated out every tick up and down as a daytrader. I traded the illusion of more for the reality of compassion in action and never looked back.
But for today, maybe just for today, I am going to ask you to do one thing for yourself. Erase one line, take down one brick in your wall, peer over the top at other people unlike you, where ever you are, whoever you are, whatever you do in this life. Open up to the less fortunate. The destitute, those that exist in despair.
No more hiding. Its time to just give a damn.