To Go Without

On our last full day in Toronto we woke up and began getting ready for church. When we were all dressed and ready to hear what we were doing from breakfast Larry sat down and began telling us how half the world lives on less than $2 a day and a large part of that lives on less that $1 a day for everything. He then turned to us and said, you guys have everything else you need, you have cloths, supplies, toiletries etc. which is more than any of these people have but today we’re going to do an exercise; I am going to walk around right now and based on if you’re one of the “fortunate” ones or unfortunate ones I will give you either a looney or a tuney (one dollar and two dollars) for food for the rest of the day. He then told us there was bread downstairs for us to have for breakfast which was more than the population who lives off this amount gets as well.

When he first explained this to us all several things ran through my head. The first was, well this seems valid and worthwhile, another good exercise to grow us devised by Larry. The second was, one dollar was not a lot but it was some and I’ve fasted for entire days before so I could obviously do it. So I entered the day very excepting of the exercise, knowing I’d be hungry but sure I could get through it, semi skeptical of why it was that big of a deal, one day without food, big deal.

We went to church and then after came back to where we were staying and Larry told us we had the afternoon off to do whatever we wanted. A few people decided to go to an internet café, I followed but when I got there decided that the purpose of the day was that these people only get a dollar a day to spend in general, not just on food, so I decided I wouldn’t allow myself to spend my own money on anything (meaning anything other than the looney I was allotted). So I walked out and down the city street by myself. I decided I wanted to spend time with God, which I do all the time, and pretty much every time it takes place at a coffee shop. So then I began weighing out my options feeling like if it were for God and I was spending time with him why couldn’t I spend my own money, I mean it was for God. I then realized that I was again missing the point so I continued walking trying to find a park to sit in and spend time with God. As I continued on my walk past all of the stores I kept on seeing places offering items that Chicago does and Indy doesn’t and that I miss and had been meaning to get while I was there… crepes, Tim Hortons, along with many other things. We were leaving the next morning, early, so this was my last chance and I’d been wanting it since I got there, just hadn’t had to time. Now I had the time and I mean I obviously had money, my wallet was full of it. I started weighing this option out and what kept coming up was, ‘Ashley you’re basically on vacation, getting away from all the stress of work and life and in a cool city, you deserve it, this is your chance.’ I felt entitled to it, I was on vacation, I did DESERVE it. Then it hit me, after all of these temptations that I could easily reason myself out of the exercise, all of these desires that were normal for me and ways that I operated on a daily basis, I realized that this was the point of the day; everyday the homeless walk down these exact same streets as I was currently walking down with the exact same temptations and I have no doubt that they too desire a nice cup or coffee or a crepe or merely anything these stores would offer but they can’t have it. Tomorrow the “exercise” would be over and my endless wallet would again be accessible and I could have anything that I desired, they didn’t have this hope, in fact the next day for them had no promises and could easily be worse than today. The next day they may have no money to spend…

The first night we had been in Toronto Larry had led us through the main downtown area, basically Toronto’s version of timesquare. We walked past all of the designer stores, all the billboards and tv screens for stores and movies, into a huge mall. Once in the mall we stopped and Larry asked us what we noticed on our walk and we discussed materialism; the call to buy into this all, the idea that if you spent enough money you too could look this way, be perfect and happy. The consumerism that we all struggle with; the marketing that is constantly being shoved down our throats on a daily basis telling us that we aren’t good enough but if we bought this product we’d be closer. The lies that we all reluctantly, to some degree, buy into… We discussed how we struggle with this and then Larry introduced the idea of what do you do with that if you’re homeless. If we all wanted to and truly believed that buying that jacket would make us more accepted we could, it was accessible to us but what if it wasn’t? What do the homeless people do with that? They walk those streets all the time too, they live on them, how do they handle the fact that they couldn’t have it even if they wanted it? Do you think that that makes them feel even more worthless to say, “you don’t look like this and you couldn’t even if you wanted to.”

I can have everything if I really want it, clothes, make-up, shoes, Starbucks, crepes, pizza, you name it. I can’t even imagine how worthless you would feel if you couldn’t. I have options, they have none, yet like I’ve said before, they are no different than me, I was just born into more privilege. I don’t deserve any of it but I get it… they don’t.