Train Runners

I spent my childhood observing the systematic nature of society, of home, of school and church. Each context unique, with its own inherent purpose, most of the time each has its days of use and hours of ‘operation’… you know, the neon ‘open’ sign sorta thing. Whether through observation or an audible inquiry, our childhood and adolescence are spent understanding rules and regulations, becoming aware of boundaries and the non-verbal queue that protect us from embarrassment and foolishness.

In college and on the cusp of adulthood, we are thrown into the system, expected to assimilate. Yet we are a society that stands on the foundation of independence. We place the concept of independence and of liberty on a pedestal and we worship it. It is our drive and our excuse; it is our purpose for and our reason against.

We are a society of contradictions. We attend to the precepts of equality and of liberty. Yet every sector of our society is filtered through structures and systems that dilute our freedom [the Indians laugh at this]. We demand equality and justice, yet those that survive in our society are those that embrace raw competition, which inevitably places others below us. To gain more, others must loose. To be the best, others must be less than.

We live by this social movement, conscious or unconscious. We pat ourselves on the back at the conclusion of the day. And find relief when we have discovered or role, our purpose in this system. Yet the longer I live here, my idealistic understanding of the world, of society, of structure and norms are slowly crumbling. Because it is in the life of the poor that I have experience service and an attitude of giving. It is in the slums and among the poor that I have seen a social responsibility like none I have experienced before. A child is left abandoned, and the community takes on the child as its own. Throughout the week I visit schools, where children with nothing, share everything. One boy, five years old, without parents or a home gave me his one possession, crafted by his own two hands. He handed me a snowflake, his only toy, made just minutes before. And then he left, leaving to work the trains and sleep on its platforms.

I sat with a kid the other day, chatted with him about his life and in those 15 minutes my theology on the world, my surety of right and wrong was shattered and my deep well of answers, collected from years of experience, was instantly dried up.

We say drugs are bad and will only harm you, we say they are for the weak, for those who cannot cope and want to escape. We say deceit is a tool of the corrupt and those who are unwilling to work for that which they have and for that which they long to posses. We say that family is something to value; it is in family that we understand our identity, by understanding our past and drawing from our heritage to cultivate our future.

We say all these things as if they are truth, as if they are certain. Yet what do you say to a child who has been abandoned and who has been forgotten? What do you say to a child who has raised himself since infancy, surviving on the scraps and garbage of others? What do you say to a child addicted to drugs, because sniffing adhesives is the only thing that erases his pain from hunger? How do you rebuke a boy, who peddles cash, simply to eat? I don’t know what to say, but I am unwilling to say they are wrong or to ask them to change without a means to provide.

This is the story of the boys from the train platform, but not told in its fullness. Because if I was to leave it at this, you would not know of their great strength, their relentless love, and their true honesty.

I have found it difficult to express the nature of my three hours with the boys who live by the train system of India. It is a day I will never forget and conversations that will burden the depths of my soul for a lifetime.

But what I know, is that more than ever I am willing to overcome for their sake, I am willing to speak and act for GOOD, for peace, and love because it is the lives of these boys, boys who hold nothing, not one possession, who crave goodness. More than ever, I am not trumped by the darkness of humanity, for I have learned a lesson…

When you have nothing left, our only possession is our soul and the choice to embrace life with joy and to once again place trust in others, because without the risk to love and to trust, we are empty. These children have nothing, all that was once there’s and all those things that we ascribe as a child’s entitlement have been stripped from them and what is left is a smile, and behind that smile, Strength. The strength of one who at the tender ages of their childhood, refused to be abused and exploited, because in the depths of their soul they know they are worth so much more.

And one after one, these children glowed when asked to be enrolled in our education program. They have fended for themselves for years, taken every responsibility and now they are asked to be given something, to be expected somewhere. It’s Magical!