Why is it that I was lucky enough to be born into a loving family where I was taught the values I was taught, provided with an education and a passion for traveling, given two mother languages and a multicultural background?
Or I could also ask it this way: Why is it that I wasn’t lucky enough to be born into the Hilton family, jet-set around the world by the time I was 12, had a personal translator so that I never had to learn an additional language, be introduced to international cuisine and local customs first hand?
Or I could ask it this way: How is it that I was fortunate enough to not be born in Darfour, becoming someone who’d only ever known a refugee camp, never set foot in a school room or learned to read or write my own language or heard about foreign countries or learned about distant lands?
I’m not talking about the political or economical injustice of it all. It’s just that the more I travel and see the world, the more I realize how, beyond the obvious economical or social reasons, traveling and seeing the world is not something everyone has the opportunity of doing in great part because of, and this is what I find so extraordinary, a simple twist of fate that nobody can control.
This thought came to me when I was walking in the rice paddies in Ubud during our trip to Bali in 2009. We came across a woman who was harvesting rice and it got me thinking of what her life must be like. I don’t want to sound condescending or anything, perhaps I’m completely off in assuming all of this, but it got me wondering if she’d ever heard of my country and made her want to visit it as I had heard about hers which in turn had lead me there. It made me wonder what her weekends or free time were spent on. Did she dream of traveling abroad every free moment she got as I did? Did she imagine tasting strange foods or hearing foreign languages? Would this be something that interested her? And if didn’t, was it simply because she had never had a chance to experiment it in the first place or because her interests were of a different nature (which is also a valid explanation for people choosing not to travel)? Had she ever even left her town? Her village? Her Island?
It hit me how some parts of the world are so secluded, so isolated, be it geographically, politically, economically, socially or even mentally that its population probably doesn’t even ponder on this. And it made me realize how by a simple question of chance I was not born in one of those places.
There I was, on the other side of the world, walking in the middle of a rice field in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, a place where up until a few months ago I’d never in my dreams thought I’d be likely to ever set foot, thousands of kilometers away from home, and all of this because of chance in the universe that had me be born in the place I’d been born in which in turn provided me with chances and opportunities which they in turn provided me with the means and the resources to find myself in Ubud at that very instant in time.
And there she was, by the same chance in the universe that had her be born in that remote place, in the middle of kilometers and kilometers of rice fields, which provided her with chances and opportunities different to mine (not saying better or worse, just different) that put her in that place, in that moment in time.
And how neither of us had been able to control that coincidence factor which, it, in turn had dictated and controlled our lives.
Now, for those born in the US, this perhaps will all sound like a bunch of baloney. After all, Americans are brought up thinking that life is what you make of it and everything is possible if you set your mind to it. And that is probably one of the reasons I am who I am today, because I had the chance of being born into a family that taught me this way of thinking. But what would have happened if I’d been born into a family that taught me I should strive to be married by the time I was 16? Or a family that taught me that I should focus on becoming a lawyer? Or a family that taught me that religion should be my first priority in life? Or a family that taught me that the most important thing in life was finding a well with drinkable water?
Perhaps the woman in the rice fields has had the same opportunities I’ve had (after all, what makes being born in Mexico much better –or worse– off than being born in Indonesia or elsewhere for that matter?) and other factors in life had resulted in her being in that place in that moment in time (again, not going into the politics of the issue itself).
Photo by Hubby: In the rice fields
But the fact that boggles my mind remains the same: how amazing that the first steps in our existence (which in turn influences us in great measure to become who we are) are controlled by a random factor.
Fned.
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