So a few weeks ago I got the chance to go out of the country for the very first time. I went on a cruise to Cozumel, Mexico with my best friends and it was nothing short of amazing! I went parasailing and zip lining. I also got to sleep in a hammock, float in the ocean with some fish, and eat until my insides cried every single day (reasons why I need the gym still). Any who, one thing that became quite obvious from the jump were the amount of foreign workers aboard the shop. At first, I just thought nothing of it. I figured cool….this cruise line is really committed to helping out other countries, but for some reason my heart never settled with this explanation. That feeling was worsened when one of the crew got on the loudspeaker and announced that they were going to make the rest of the crew “dance” for us during one of our umpteenth dinners.
You know that meme of Drake where he’s court side at a game initially smiling and enjoying his life and then in the next moment he starts thinking about world hunger and how messed up the planet is? That meme? That was that moment for me. Now, I could have been over responsive, but that’s just how I felt.
And then they all danced in their costumes and all the positivity they could muster up after busting tables and who knows what else all day. I felt like I was viewing a showing where humans were just puppets on display and there went my trip. It didn’t help either that our awesome (he really was though) server explained to us how they live on the ship, don’t get to go home often at all, carry on endless servitude with tips waging less than $70 a month on top of their minimal salary I’m sure, and etc.
I didn’t mean to sadden you dreamers, I actually meant to wake you up! A lot of us complain, myself included, about things that others can’t even imagine being a problem at all. That cruise made me check my privilege. Yes, even my privilege as a young, African American woman in America. This is not to diminish our individual problems at all…it is just to get you to consider and know that there are people out there living in and through worse each and every day. There are people wishing they could be where you are right now. So what are you doing to live your life to the fullest for those that cannot? When’s the last time you stopped to consider how good your life is or how lucky you are to be in this time period with the current problems you have instead of another? My guess is that it’s been a while for some of us.
I want to encourage us to not only be grateful, but be inspired to better ourselves because there’s someone else that can’t on their own. Don’t settle for what you have, be great at whatever it is you’re doing because you’re not just doing it for you. Someone before you took steps so that your life could be better than what they had. Don’t waste their efforts. Pass them on.
Ki,
A humbled dreamer