It is dark. A smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol creeps along the walls to the young boy’s room. He lays there trying to sleep, but the knife-like pain from his empty stomach keeps him awake. He wraps himself further in the musty comforter; the warmth from it collides with the coldness of his tears. Slowly, he dozes away leaving only the sound of his rumbling stomach to fill the silence.
That young boy was me at the age of seven years old. I often went to bed with only two meals on my stomach. My family, like many other individuals living around my trailer park, suffered from poverty and food insecurity – an epidemic which has infested our society. For several years, I only ate meals that were provided by my school through the National School Lunch Program. These meals were a crutch in my life. They helped me focus, and they were something I looked forward to every day. I remember one day very specifically. I walked through the big glass doors and immediately turned left to go to the cafeteria; I was practically running because today was pancake and sausage on a stick day – my favorite. The smell of warm, savory, buttery pancakes filled my nostrils, and the first warm, delicious bite made every trouble go away. For a moment, I did not think of my home life or what I was going to eat or how hungry I was going to be. I only thought of the taste.
Many years later, food insecurity became an obsolete problem to me. My parents had divorced. My dad went from being a stinkingalcoholic to a world-renowned father, and my mom became a stay-at-home parent. Both households always had enough food (even though we still fell into the category of poor). Without the pressure of solving my food crisis, I began to have time and energy to focus towards educating myself. I studied Politics, Math, English, Philosophy, and much more. My intelligence started to grow, and with it, my understanding of people. One particular philosophical and psychological idea which stuck with me was Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It explained, in theory, the different levels we needed to climb to reach “self-actualization” or our highest potential as a person. I began to realize this theory could be applied to the whole of humanity; if we could become more sustainable, we could reach a self-actualized society. I also realized how Maslow’s Theory could be revised; instead of a singular climb up it could be seen more as a fluid self-placement of each stair. For example, you can have love and belonginess without having food. You can achieve self-actualization with just the understanding of these situations. This mixed with the idea of the Universal Man idea, the belief that all people contribute to a universal understanding of what man is, from Jean-Paul Sartre fueled a fire in me to learn how we could become more connected to provide better help to those of us who are at the bottom – to those of us who were like young me.
As Jean-Paul Sartre says, “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.” After learning so much, I realized I still had not made myself. I had not begun to take action. So, I asked myself, “How am I going to contribute to the societal progression, and how am I going to lift the lowest individuals up”?
My first step was volunteering in several different ways: handing out candy on Halloween at my high school, giving Christmas gifts to families who could not afford them, and picking up trash on the side of roads. My second step was learning to be more emotionally intelligent, because we cannot help others if we are not at our best. I began to eat better, meditate, and reflect on my previous situations. My reflection led me to see how rooted connectivity and creativity are in our universal experience of life.
Growing up in that trailer park, I may not have had food, but I had people; People who were suffering like me. I remember a multitude of scratched knees and youthful giggles with kids who were also hungry, kids who were my friends. We were connected not by what we had but what we did not. We became creative by using makeshift tools to fix bike chains and scooter wheels. We become creative in how we helped each other like when my friend fell and cut his elbow up, so I took my shirt off and wrapped it around his wound so tightly it seemed like his arm would burst with pressure. We become creative because we did not have the tools to be practical. My reflection taught me that our strength does not come from individual existence, it comes from our collective connectivity – how hard we will work and how creative we will get to lift the lowest of us up.
My growth did not end in high school. Now, I am at a wonderful college taking classes which teach all about sustainability. I am reading more books and articles on how we can achieve long-term prosperity. I am studying intersectionality, and how it contributes to the overall arch of sustainability. I am going to begin working with The College of Charleston’s Food Pantry, which provides food and other products to students who need them. In the short-term future, I plan on starting a blog on sustainability and other topics. In the long-term future, I plan on becoming a journalist and covering topics of sustainability – especially war and its impact on prosperity. I plan on making myself better, and with myself, humanity.
No comments yet.