Identify | Teen Ink

Identify

February 18, 2010
By ElizabethBlack PLATINUM, St. Louis, Missouri
ElizabethBlack PLATINUM, St. Louis, Missouri
40 articles 7 photos 15 comments

There are so many people in the world.
So many people, you will never get to meet.
Tall people, short people, thin people, fat people.
Rich people, poor people, happy people, sad people.
And for every person you meet, there are thousands more
Just waiting to meet you.
We live in America. We are fortunate, lucky.
Proud, strong. Rich, greedy, fat, gluttonous, prosperous.
We have never struggled. Not like them.
Not like the poorest of the poor. Not like our brothers and sisters.
The ones we haven’t met.
How can we identify? How can we truly imagine? How can we make a difference?
Is a few pennies really enough?
We live in America. Does suffering even exist?
It does.
Each person has to struggle, but each person you haven’t met has ten thousand times more struggles. If only. If only I could just reach across the world. If I could pluck down a star
From the Heavens. If I could just shake the world, until all the riches were divided up. Equally.
If only I could lose my ignorance. But I will always be ignorant.
I will never know what suffering is. I can never imagine.
I cannot know, but I can believe. I can reach across the world, in a few words.
With just these simple sentences, I can bring people together. I can create hope.
I cannot save lives. Sometimes, I cannot even make a difference. But I can try.

The author's comments:
A charity week at my school really got me thinking. And this was the result.

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