Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Food for Thought

Last Saturday night my family attended a benefit concert for Haiti Allies, a local program that has been worked in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for over 20 years.

One of the volunteers relayed a story that I cannot simply to stop turning over in my mind.

On a recent visit, he cut the hair of a local man, and while doing so the man stopped him and say "Hey, are you rich?"  To which my fellow Madisonian replied, "I don't know. What's rich?"

"Do you eat every day?" the man asked

"Yes I do."

"Well then," the man from Haiti replied, "you're rich. If you eat every day, you are rich." 

As America struggles in political turmoil over how to regain its "economic footing" and we observe the 11th anniversary of September 11, a date on which some of the world's people expressed clear hatred of who we are, this is a conversation I think we must seriously consider.