Bridging the gap between the "rich" and the "poor"

For the past three weeks I have been meaning to write something on an issue I really feel I must address. Now if you've read my blog before, you will realise that all my posts begin with quotations. This is because I get my inspiration to write from listening to or reading other peoples thoughts. There's always a line somewhere in their works that appeals to me and from that I sometimes develop a concept different from the context it was initially used and it wasn't until today when a friend put up the quote below on her Facebook status that i finally found the right one for this post.

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"Israel was founded on other people's land, never forgets to remind us of the holocaust but they are intolerant to immigrants."

Boniface Mwangi.

I am not here to criticise the issue of the immigrants and the complete violation of their human rights currently taking place in Israel, although it is really sickening, but I’m here to question what humanity, as a whole has come to and hope that through this post I manage to reach out to at least one person and change their perception of life and how they relate and see others. 

In the world we live in today, there are numerous problems and there is no need for me to list them, as we are all well aware of them. The root of all these problems has been watered down to one simple fact, GREED! We are all so focused on gaining more for ourselves that those who have, use their means to oppress those who don’t, in order to “have more” and as a result, the marginalised, take desperate measures to “have some”. 

There are two kinds of people in this life, and for the purpose of this post I shall refer to them as the “breakers” and the “bridgers”. I’ll tell you a little about these two kinds of people through a personal story based on two phases of my life. 

I grew up in an average family. My dad is big on education, so he did his best to ensure that he took me through the best middle and higher education systems. I socialised with people of the same background, meaning those who also studied at the same or similar kinds of schools and having grown up in Kenya, these would fall under the British/American system schools category. My parents would always tell me that I am simply fortunate for what I have and that I should never overlook others just because they lived in a different neighbourhood or couldn’t afford to go to private schools like I did. I took this advice to heart but although my actions were not physically discriminatory towards these people, they mentally were. I developed a mind-set where I wouldn’t be bothered to approach a kid from a public school because in my head he was classified as an “Obe” (swahili slang for thug) because of his lack of fluency in the english language or because his way of dressing was different from mine or simply because his Swahili was “ghetto” compared to mine, which was different because of the western influence from the schools I attended. As a result, I developed a stereotype for the kids who went to public schools, so whenever any of them would approach me, I had already developed a judgement in my head, denying them of the chance to feel indifferent and denying myself of the chance to learn that they weren’t different. I was a breaker. I helped create the divide in the society I live in. 

As I progressed further into my high school education, I began to live by the principles and values that were being instilled in me by my folks. I began to socialize more with people of different backgrounds, different cultures and so forth. I realised we were all one and the same and it was my duty to show my appreciation for what I have, by giving back to society and instead of creating a difference, I started to show indifference. I realised there is a unique story to every person and was interested in knowing it, if they were interested in sharing. This way I became a bridger. Bridging the gaps between different people by treating everyone as a human being who was not defined by anything other than the fact that we had the same colour of blood flowing in our veins and striving to make the lives of those around me better. And it wasn’t until then that I truly grasped the meaning of the saying, “the happiest people do not have the best of everything, they make the best of everything”, hence the reason why I put the words rich and poor on the title, in quotations. Because true happiness is not defined by material well being and therefore, the words rich and poor are relative. 

Now apply this to life in general… How you create a stereotype in your mind about that guy seating next to you in the bus by holding on tightly to your phone just because his clothes aren’t too clean and this makes him “suspicious” or the guy who was shot last night by the police because he had dreadlocks and therefore he must have been a criminal. The human mind I believe is always stereotyping but what makes the difference between the breakers and the bridgers is that the bridgers do not base their judgement on what the mind creates, but rather approach every situation and every individual with an open mind. Once you learn to brush off the immediate assumptions, you begin to be more and more open minded. 

People are normally categorised into groups because they are similar. You are a Maasai because you share similar character traits with the Maasai’s but somehow you are tribalist towards another yet you call yourself a Kenyan, which is quite ironic because it means that you also share similar character traits with fellow Kenyans regardless of tribe. You show love for your fellow Israelis and discriminate against other races, yet you say you are human and are a part of the world. Don’t you then contradict yourself by not showing love to humanity as a whole? There’s a reason you weren’t placed on an island outside of this universe, but instead are part of a greater body known as humanity. 

We human beings are complicated. The irony of our actions cannot be understood and does not need to be understood because there shouldn’t be any in the first place. If there is one thing the Egyptian revolution taught us, is that change can only be achieved when people stop looking at their differences and instead focus on what they share in common.  The good news is, WE share a lot in common :D! You and I and oh yeah... that other guy too. 

The breakers are the ones killing the efforts of the bridgers and when we begin to look at each other as human beings who anchor to but are not defined by our skin colour, racial backgrounds, gender, class, languages or geographical borders, we will truly start living. Only then will we be able to claim to be rich because humanity will become a help cycle where no one will feel the need to kill or steal out of desperation or watch a child dying of hunger on their 42” screen because your neighbour, will be no different from your brother or sister. One people, One universe. 

BRIDGE THE GAP, ERASE THE STEREOTYPES!

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