What Really Scares Me

When I wake up in the morning, I don’t remember that few people probably died in the desert yesterday. When I shower, I don’t think about how there are people out there in the desert who would be grateful to drink the water I’m showering with. When I wait for the bus just because I don’t want to walk 1.4 miles to work, I don’t think about how migrants walk days and nights without knowing that their destination might be Operation Streamline, shackled in shame. When I eat, I don’t think about how migrants only get orange peanut butter crackers to eat at the detention centers. When I do my devotional Quiet Times, I don’t think about migrants dropping Bibles because they are simply too heavy to carry. And before I sleep in my comfortable bed, I don’t think about how migrants are probably on the move about now, carefully stepping on the way to hide from the Border Patrols.

It only gets to me, three or four times a day, when I look at the death map at Humane Borders or when I hear certain stories of people. Stories where a man is begging for water and food, and Minute Men giving him food fingertip long.

And that’s what scares me.

I’m in Tucson, the ground zero of this immigration issue. I intern at Humane Borders, the place that puts out water stations for the migrants for the very purpose of preventing death. I’ve had two weeks of delegation with Border Links. I read books on immigration. I’ve talked to people in the streets in Tucson about SB1070. I’ve been to the Border, felt the wall, and walked the migrant trail.

And yet, I don’t think about them enough, because I’m busy getting up everyday, eating, reading, dressing up, getting on the bus, and thinking about ways to get back.

How can I expect other people to listen to me and be interested in this issue, when I, a person surrounded by stories and experiences, am too busy living my own life?

Of course, I intern at Humane Borders and I have very tangible results of helping the migrants to survive on the desert. Yet sometimes, the work seems so detached that I just forget.

I still have few more weeks, but I would still really like to find out how I can be a bigger help to this issue. I wonder what my role is in this issue. Or more so, how much of a role I’m willing to take. I just hope I’m never too busy living my own life to care more about the world around me. And to always be grateful for the blessings I have, and to never take them for granted.