How Lucky are We?

I remember an experience I had while I was growing up in the Philippines, which I look back on every time I think that things are not going my way. Like most (all?) people I have some bad days where I think “everything’s gone to shit”. But every time I think that, I remember this experience and it brings me back to reality about how lucky I am to be here, where I am.

Living in Shit

On a field trip one day, as part of a leadership training program in high school for “young, promising, and enterprising children” where we learned how the local governments operated, we went to a community of people living in the outskirts of a fairly large town in Laguna (the province where I was from). We were a group of high school students from schools all over the province who’ve had fairly diverse backgrounds and personalities. It was, as I remember 50% girls and 50% boys, some gay, some straight, all bright eyed and idealistic. Some came from fairly affluent families, some from middle class families, and some from poor families.

That’s enough background. Now let’s turn our attention to the community.

One of the industries in this area is duck farming. This involves raising ducks for their eggs (they’re bigger and more sturdy than chicken eggs), for their meat (they’re much less maintenance and hardier than chickens), and their shit. Ducks can produce an incredible amount of shit. This shit is used in the production of good quality fertiliser and soil “supplements” for all the agricultural indistries.

Now picture this for a moment. You have hundreds to thousands of ducks, by a lake that isn’t exactly the cleanest, and they roost on land where workers collect and process the shit. The smell is just assaulting.

This is not the worst of it. The poverty in the area forces these workers and families to LIVE AMONGST THE DUCKS. Quite literally, they live in shit. Children have been born in this area, living and breathing the stench of the duck shit literally all their lives.

Breaking Heart

Now if you grew up in my family, you would have been pampered. We had help that lived with us that cleaned our rooms, our house, cooked the meals, and generally were there for our every beck and call. The house would have been sterilised every day and you wouldn’t have had to worry about anything but what you had to do. I lived in relative luxury when I was young.

When I saw the living conditions of some of my neighbours — this community was just half an hour away from where we lived — it broke my heart. I felt the injustice of life in front of me. I was 14 years old then. I almost cried that there were people that lived in horrible conditions.

What made it more real was that, they had no complaints. It’s like they’ve been resigned to their fates. And that they just did what was neede to survive. They had nowhere else to go and they had nothing else to do. This was the life they knew and they wouldn’t know what a better life could look like.

But then, it made me feel silly. The interesting part of this was, they were happy. Despite their situation, they had a smile on their face, and they enjoyed their company, and they had seemed to have no worries.

I asked one of our elder guides in the trip something, and what he said was profound and lives with me through this day.

Me: Why do they stay here?
Guide: They have nowhere else to go, Dean.
Me: What is the government or the community doing about it?
Guide: Not much. This is their life and this is their home. We can’t make them move somewhere else and say you can’t do this.
Me: That’s… really sad.
Guide: Yes. Let’s be thankful that we were born in different circumstances. We could have been them.

That was heavy.

It seemed then that the things I worried about, the complaints I had about my life, and the challenges I’d have been facing — they paled in comparison.

We could have been them.

Perspective and Resolve

When I got home from that trip, I had a bit more time to digest what happened.

We can’t choose where we’re born. I had been incredibly lucky that I was born in a loving and relatively affluent family. I had been afforded all the trappings of a modern life at the time. I’m incredibly lucky that my parents were kind, loving, gentle, hard-working people.

Twenty years on, I regularly reflect on how bad things could have turned out. I think about that community, and wonder what they could be doing 20 years on. I think about how I can help improve people’s lives, because that’s the least I can do with the luck that I’ve had. I think about what I’ve been doing for my family so they don’t ever have to go through poverty — something I’ve witnessed first hand.

I learned in that one experience that life is both a lottery and an adventure. I could have been born in that environment but that doesn’t really define my happiness nor my destiny. I’ve learned to appreciate the things I do have and even the things I’ve lost. There’ve been people in my life that I cherish, as they’ve turned my life into something that brings value to other people.

I also learned that everyone is incredibly lucky to be alive. Even despite living in shit, literally, they were happy being with their family and living life one day at a time. They had their family and it seems that’s all they needed to be happy.

Another thing I learned was that we are all pretty much born into a shit farm. Some of us have our own version of an environment where we think is unfair, or unfortunate, or totally broken. The important part is how we choose to live in the shit is what matters.

Don’t let the shit get to you.

Call to Action

If you’re not living in shit, you’re lucky as hell. Use the luck you’ve been given to make a difference. This life you have is valuable not just to you, but also to the people around you.

And if you are living in shit, I sympathise. We are still lucky to be alive and able to at least have respite from all the shit around us. Find some fresh air, take a deep breath, and know that it’s not all shit.

Do you have a defining experience similar to this? If not, have you considered seeing how bad others might have it, and use that to fuel your drive to make a difference?

Thank you for reading.

Dean is a Software Engineer in Sydney, Australia. Thoughts are his own, and does not reflect his employer’s.