The privilege of birth

Lately I have been thinking increasingly about some facts we hardly ever consider: our privilege of birth!

I know this might sound random but think about if for a minute. Don’t you think that much of how your life will be is already decided before you’re even born? I am not saying that all is god-given and that we can not influence our lives or what becomes of us, but still…

My parents celebrated their 60th birthday some weeks ago and we made this huge party. It was a great success and everybody was happy. My parents wanted to “give something back” so we collected some money for the foundation I used to work in Ecuador back in 2005. As a preparation I wrote a little report about my experience, to tell people what it was like. And that made me think. Those children at the foundation are all cerebral handicapped, which means, that during the “process of birth” the brain got no or not enough air and its function is therefore limited (this explanation is really poor, I am sorry for that but I lack deeper knowledge). All of the children at this foundation needed a wheel-chair although some were able to walk at least a little without it. The level of their handicap varies greatly and the foundation therefore “divided” the children into three groups according to their ability. I do not want to go into too much detail here but I might write another post about that later on. It was an incredible experience for me to work with those children and also very rewarding.

However, there was also one thing that made me sad. Those children don’t have a future. Any future, to be more precisely. Unlike Western Europe, Ecuador has no possibility to integrate those children into its labour force. They most probably won’t be able to live an independent life and will live with their parents for all their life. This makes it also more difficult for their parents to work because they need to take care of their child. So “just” because they were born in Ecuador, they will never be able to live an independent life whereas if they had been born here there would be some organisation for them, they could live either alone or with some other handicapped people. Don’t you think that is not fair? What have we done to deserve the luck of being born in Western Europe? And do we at least acknowledge that and are happy about it? I would say most time we don’t. We don’t even think about it. We take all those opportunities for granted. We are so used to such luxury that we do not even recognise it anymore, left alone appreciate it.

But this example is not the only one. I also read a book of a Swiss woman named Lotti Latrous, married to a manager of Nestle. She lived a nice, luxurious life wherever they lived. But one that she wanted more, a meaning for her life and so she started working with children affected by AIDS in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). Some of those children were orphans, other had a dying mother. Slowly she opened up a hospital where they can live together with their mothers, get food and also education. She also runs an information service about AIDS and HIV or other health issues like nutrition and gives out medication (very often for free if people can’t pay). Furthermore there is medical centre where everybody can get a free consultation.

This book is very touching because it’s about somebody who enjoyed luxury and gave it up on purpose in order to “do some good”. “Do some good”, but not in a “I know everything better” way like many other people. I admire her for all she does and I am not sure if I would be strong enough to live her life. It is great to have people just like her and we really need them, currently maybe more than ever. But again, there was this nagging feeling. That somehow this is not right. AIDS can not be cured. At least not today. That is sadly also true for Western Europe. People die from AIDS also in Western Europe. But the WAY the die, and HOW FAST they die, that is a completely different story. And this leads me back to my first remark. The privilege of birth. Those two (quite extreme) stories illustrated hopefully what I mean by this. We can not change our privilege. But we could at least try to live up to it. To think about it and to acknowledge it. To be happy about what we have and to think about people with less privileges. At the very least THINK about them from time to time.