Wishes

Yesterday as I stood in line at the checkout, I found myself noticing how many of the cashiers were older. Over the past few years I have seen more and more retirement aged people working all sorts of different jobs. When my turn came, I placed my few items on the counter including a couple of home furnishings magazines. The checker was a woman, probably in her late sixties with beautiful snow white hair and a kind and gentle face. She greeted me warmly and as she picked up the top magazine, her face wistfully softened over the beautiful picture of the interior showcased inside. For a moment, everything else was forgotten as she longingly said, "oh, those grand big homes." The ache of what the picture represented, which to her seemed far away and unobtainable, hung in the air between us. Here was her life, and in that moment you could tell to her it seemed very far away from the interiors of that magazine cover.

In the hustle of living, it is easy to forget that we are all fellow travelers, each with our own hopes and dreams and secret longings. There have always been those with more and those with less. That isn't inherently bad and life while it may not be fair, is still good. Each of us comes into the world to make a life and the diversity of those lives however modest, is needed. The difficulties come when those who have little or nothing feel helpless in their efforts to make their way, when it seems that the opportunities to see what you can do with your life, appear to be only for others. How we can achieve balance between those two end points for people everywhere; to help those who need help without destroying their capacity to feel proud and capable, is one of the great moral questions of this age. We can provide endless food and shelter and aid, but living also requires hopes and dreams that can only nourish and satisfy when they are brought to life by the person who cherishes them. Some dreams will perish, some lives will falter before the finish. But what seems essential to remember is that everyone's dreams deserve the chance to see the light of day.

"All the people like us are 'we', and everyone else is 'they'." –Rudyard Kipling