Living In The Real World Is Tough Business

For the better part of three years, I devoted my life to educating women and teenagers about issues of human exploitation. I studied facts concerning human trafficking, bullying, pornography, media exploitation, and land exploitation. I spoke. I wrote. I coordinated a statewide symposium, created an interactive prayer exhibit, and set up an informational booth at state and national meetings. I changed my habits, signed petitions, and attempted only to buy fair trade coffee and chocolate and to not use Styrofoam if at all possible. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand how people refused to become involved in fighting issues of human exploitation once they had been exposed to their realities…

Then I stopped working for WMU and everything changed.
The realities of human exploitation weren’t on my radar screen every day.
Only. They were. Just in different ways.
Most of them ways I cannot control.

Hospitals are bound by hygiene rules that require disposable products. My job at the hospital was to serve as a chaplain, not educate about human exploitation.

Mrs. Flora really likes paper towels and paper plates. My job is to spend time with her and help her shop, not try to change her ways.

Schools are underfunded and pushed for time. My job at the school is to teach music…although I suppose, in time, I could lobby for changes that encourage environmentally responsibility.

Additionally:

Coffee, creamer, sugar, non-sugar sweetener, hot chocolate, tea, chocolate, candy, and treats are expensive. Fair trade products are considerably more expensive. Teachers are underfunded, too.

Students watch a lot of TV and movies, play a lot of video games, and listen to a lot of music. As a result, many of them think that parents and teachers are buffoons, that being mean is funny, that they are entitled to whatever they want, and that using graphic language and having thoughts that include words such as “suck” and “balls” is perfectly normal. I teach elementary school. Detailed sex education, including the dangers of pornography, is not in our curriculum.

After work on Tuesday, I wrote both my former boss and assistant and said something like this: “Educating about human exploitation is a whole lot easier than living in it every day. Seeing it played out is really hard. And I feel so helpless in doing anything about it. Living in the real world is tough business.”

And it is.

I’m still doing what I can to fight exploitation. But providing mugs for coffee club and taking my own cup into McDonalds seems so small when I look outside and see kids throwing other kids on the ground and realize that they are watching unhealthy images that will forever stay in their minds. Yet I will continue to do what I can—not the least of which is pray—and I will ask you to do the same.

This is not theory anymore, friends. It’s not education. It is real life. And real life in the real world is tough business.