What To Live For

I'm back in internet land again. Can't say I'm particularly happy, I miss Mizak more than ever and it's only been one day. I don't want to imagine what leaving Haiti will feel like.
This isn't going to be an uplifting blog I'm afraid, but this is something I need to wrote about.
In Cite Solei (the slum) several people were killed this week. Several of these murders were very brutal, and that's all of the detail I am willing to go into.
What I will say is that at least three were children.
I was sitting at my computer hanging out in Jason's (director) office when Samuel (ground manager) came by to tell us this. It was only about halfway through their conversation that I really began paying attention. I asked if it was due to elections and Jason said...well not really.
Jason phrased it in a way that I wish I could capture in better detail, but I'll try my best.
Sometimes when people live in such a brutal area, like a slum, it may feel as though there is nothing to be living for. Like actions don't have real consequences.
When you have nothing to live for, you lose your respect for human life. If you don't care about your own life, why would you value someone else's?
You kill because you can.
Maybe it makes you feel something, when everything else feels like nothing.
We, as a western society, do not understand, can not possibly understand this.
I am sitting here at my computer, listening to classical music on my phone, and three miles away people are in a slum being shot at random. And for what? For nothing.
I know where my next meal is coming from, I know that I have enough water to bathe myself, I know that there is a wall surrounding the premises of the hostel I am in, and I know that I am safe.
But everyday I take that for granted.
I don't have to use the street as my toilet, and I don't have to worry if my child is going to be killed by some stranger who needs an adrenaline rush.
I've been living in Haiti for ten weeks, and yet I still have not fully appreciated the life I was given.
Think about it: when was the last time you took your eyes away from your phone, or your textbook, or the clock ticking away the hours left at work? When was the last time you looked out at the world and thought about how amazing it is to be living the life you have, when billions of other people have it so much unfathomably worse?
I'm not trying to sound angry, I'm trying to make a point.
We read the news everyday. We know what goes on in the world (kind of), but does that change the perspective we have on our own lives? It should.
We are so lucky to have what we have. To have been dealt the hand that we were dealt.
We are blessed.
Your potential is endless, and you have everything to live for. So live for something amazing. Don't take anything for granted.