Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

“My life has never been ideal. I came from a desperately low income family. My illiterate father never went to school and he stopped working due to his illness since when I was 10. I never asked my parents for money ever since, and thanks God, now I am able to set aside some of my income for them.

No matter how wealthy we are, we are bound to converge to the same reality. The same reality that lives just outside our doorsteps. They are the informal workers working just enough to pay the rent. They are the little kids working on the streets despite the fact that they should be in school, having an education that we ourselves took for granted.

We can escape, and pretending to be blind of any unpleasantness of our surroundings. But it would be a disappointment for humanity, for us to be so ignorant of the reality we face every day.

This is a story of inequality: that the world we live in is fundamentally unfair. The children of a farm worker in a remote villages of this country, will never be as successful as the children of more privileged couples living in the big cities, who have the right environment and capital needed to send their kids to a decent school. And one way leads to another, they’ll go to a decent university, have a good career, and therefore living a promised life.

It is a hard thing to live by, to be seen with prejudice, to not having a safety net and comfortable home of a parent who supports and ensures that we have a bright future. It’s hard to beat the odds when we are of an underprivileged, minority, or other disadvantaged group, we have to play by someone else’s rules, where every cards are stacked against us.

Maybe it’s to late to save the generation before us, but now is the time for the future: the children. I don’t yet know what role I will play, but I will be there.

And I will not rest, until all children born in this country are given the opportunity, to see what’s possible out there and pursue anything they ever wanted to be.”

The question is taken from the last lines of a poem by Pulitzer Prize-Winning author, Mary Oliver.