A world most foreign.......

I'm spending this evening with my music and Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope.
It’s taken me, for some unknown reason, 5 months to really get into this book.
Excitingly, I've been gripped and taken to a place where thoughts sitting upon a page become emotions and nuggets of wonder to over turn.
I'm in his chapter titled Race.

Wham!
It begins to hit me how we could be doing more for our poor. We see all these TV adds for African kids worthy also of our aid and time. But what of our own country's African Americans? When and where did we as a country, decide not to help them? Why reach farther than a few city blocks to help people in need? Do we need distance to donate?

This is not to say that I have ever been one to donate to any real charity. I figure it’s something I'll do when I have money. But what I think is needed more is not just money but time donated. And so a new part of me is born in my heart, my want to give to the world has opened further. Not just a want to invent or help saving rain forests or their animals or even the planet at large. Now I want to bring our poor (both monetarily and educationally) up and out of the ghettos. To have all the things I do, things we take for granted.

I'm left wondering if I just have too much that I want to give to the world? If it’s normal for humans to want to take care of another, without even knowing these people so removed from myself? Or does our society program us to keep our heads and hearts in our pockets? Worried about money and leaving us to fend for families and little else.

A world with me in the middle and you as far away as I can keep you.
A world I wouldn't wish upon anyone.
A world most foreign....