Would we learn to love more and give more and be more, all the while needing less?

My grandfather says we’re Americans, that we have to worry about ourselves and no one else. I wonder if that comes from a generation that didn’t have much or if it’s because he’s older and needs to be careful with his health and general well being.

Either way, I have to believe that, as humans, we’re capable of positive change. I have to believe that the next thirty years of my life won’t be filled with debt and a recession that pounds my do-what-you-love-most attitude to the ground.

I can’t sit around a kitchen table and believe that we are just Americans. That we should worry only about being Americans and feeding our economy and pushing onwards and upwards until we’re knee high in domestic spending.

I have to believe in third world countries and the power of a single pair of shoes or bowl of rice or pound of flour because I can see clearly in my head the world that would ensue if people like me didn’t. If people like me gave up.

Bodies would be lined up like dead soldiers on the side of the road, flies swarming over them in the dry heat. Distended stomachs would ache. Bellies would never feel full and beds would never be warm enough to keep out the night’s breeze passing through the hole in the wall that serves as a window.

Heartbeats would slow and life-giving hands would hold cold hands by the bedside. Mothers would cry that they loved their children too much yet they couldn’t save them. They could never be enough. Do enough. Love enough.

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I don’t need to see it to know. Stringing together small gifts and sending them away to the depths of poverty is not going to end it all. Tomorrow will begin anew for children who will never know the feeling of fullness. Tomorrow will bring emotional battles for the parents who just want more for their children.

Don’t all parents want more?

Aren’t we all supposed to be each others’ parents?

Shouldn’t I look out for those with less, regardless of where they are or what they need?

I wonder if we shipped off, those of us who are too self-aware for our own good. Left them stranded in the middle of an African village for a few months.

Would their skin wrinkle and brown beneath the hot sun in the middle of the afternoon? Would they learn the skills necessary to stay alive? Or would it be other lessons?

Like the feel of sweaty palms clasped together in the middle of the night when disease kicks in and the medicine won’t help.  Or the hole in their stomach when the food supply runs short. Or the sense of community that builds up when no one has much but everyone still finds a way to have enough.

Would we learn to love more and give more and be more, all the while needing less?

Or would the sound of a slowed heartbeat scare us into submission, until we tell ourselves on sleepless nights in air conditioned rooms that we can never be enough? That we have our own problems. That the government is messed up and there is nothing we can do.

Let me tell you something: there is always, always something we can do. We just so often don’t like the answer.

We have to stop looking at ourselves through a frosted glass mirror.

There used to be this application on Facebook called Compare People. Maybe it still exists, but I don’t use it anymore. The computer would generate match-ups of friends to put against each other, and you would have to label one as more dateable or a better kisser or smarter or more likely to succeed. Stuff like that. I was always rated best listener.

And I thought that seemed so odd. Sure, I was quiet, but most of these people didn’t even know me well. When had I ever listened to them or been their shoulder to cry on?

I’ve always had this pretty nasty tendency to spin things around, to knock myself down. To say that introvert is a bad word.

And maybe it does seem bad, awful even, when you’re fifteen or sixteen and you think being the quiet kid translates to being the social outcast. How could anyone like someone, want to be their friend, if they never shared their opinions with the rest of the world?

I’m in the process of learning something, though. It takes time, and it’s not something that happens over night, but that Facebook application made me realize something pretty huge about our generation.

Do you know how easy it is to sit in front of a computer and click through someone’s pictures, to compare yourself to them? You can immediately say so many things, so many untruths about them.

She’s prettier. Her hair falls perfectly like that. She’s skinnier. He’s stronger. He’s cooler. She’s tanner. He has the best friends. She wakes up and looks amazing.

And you can immediately think of another set of things you can’t even possibly see just by looking at a Facebook profile. She has three majors? Overachiever. He listens to Bob Marley? Pothead. She wears Hollister? Easy. He wears Sperry’s? Prep.

We label ourselves, and everyone around us, negatively, and then we spend hours and hours trying to combat those labels. The goal of our whole lives is the search for this perfect unattainable person. The person we want to be.

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We’re so busy looking to the future and trying to figure out how to be that person, when the most important person is the one we are right here and now. Standing in front of the mirror. But we distort everything, spinning it around.

The other people in our lives, they see the good in us all the time. They’re not looking through frosted glass. It’s right there in front of their eyes, and they love us for it. For the way we wake up and our hair’s a little tousled or the way we laugh a little loud or eat a little more than those models on TV. They love us because we’re not a cookie cutter image of the next person, and we’re not trying to be.

Don’t let them be wrong about that. If we took the time to ask ten different people to describe us, each answer would be different. I made my sister a video for her high school graduation and asked each person to describe her.

Crazy. Sassy. Attitude. Energetic. Bubbly. Different. Amazing. Imaginative. Caring. Colorful. Easygoing. Dramatic. Fun. Artsy. Perky. Cute. Magnetic. Sarcastic. Funny. Awesome.

You are a conglomeration of wonderful words floating around in other people’s heads. Maybe some of the words don’t even exist yet. You bring something new and different to the table for every encounter you have.

What are your words?