Barnes
Honors English 3
5 February 2013
The Impoverished
Isn't it annoying when your mom or dad says, "No, you can't get that", or "You have that already". Sometimes its so unbearable for the ears of a child to hear those words coming from an adult. No one wants the word "NO" to reject their desire and snap it into thin air. But, sometimes I guess they think that its high time to realize that the world doesn't revolve around you. The transparent blindfold that covered my eyes for so many years finally slipped off when truth came to me like a slap in the face that life isn't fair. The wall between need and want clearly diminished its boundaries as it flashed before my eyes when I visited Karachi, Pakistan. Aside from seeing my family, that year, I also saw the reality of life along its rubble-filled streets.
Being a teenager provided with several luxuries in America, its hard to actually see what life is like outside the perimeters of the country. Having a home for shelter and nourishing food to fill a stomach is what pretty much everyone yearns for in order to have a content life. Yet, I always have strived to have better than what is actually necessary. Numerous arrays of raiments line up my closet. Colorful jewelry, scarves, and makeup overflow from my dresser. Unfortunately, the desire to have more is always an irresistible feeling which feels like a fly who keeps buzzing around your head.
Whereas, in Karachi, with a population of over a million, life seems to be filled with conflicts everyday. Lonely...starving... sad. That sums up what many people were like as they begged for money to be able to put a morsel of food into their children's mouths'.
As I walked, sediment layering up in the niches of my shoes, I made my way through the tight alleyways by my aunt’s home. Having arrived by the marketplace, it stunned me to see how many people were in ragged clothing ripped at the edges, feet unprotected from the prickly unmolded pebbles, and bones sticking out their flesh to reflect malnourishment. As I inched closer to the market, I glanced around at my surroundings and noticed a pair of young boys sleeping soundly on the bare dirt ground as if for a few moments, they were escaping the torment and labor that the world had in store for their unfortunate souls. My heart skipped a beat for them and droplets began to form in the corners of my eyes, but I sucked in a deep breath and held in my emotions.
I feel that the world evolves everyday and I moved along with it, but took a new sense of understanding about the world’s fortunate and unfortunate views of how life could be. Life isn’t something to be taken granted for and the more grateful you are for what is provided to you, the much easier it will be to give less emphasis on what you don’t have and focus more on what you do.
