Someone's calling...and its time to listen!

Its 12:55am here in the east coast and as I lay my head to rest, the most awkward thing happens. As though my subconscious has taken over me, I feel somehow removed from my own being and like clockwork, I double click on the Microsoft Word icon and for fifteen solid minutes, all i type over and over again is the following: "Ishamael Beah (Sierra Leone), Kevin Sumba (Kenya), Ugwu (Nigeria), Agu (unknown west african country)". This has been happening for the past three days! Who are these people you ask? They are children...children robbed of their childhood...children exposed to WAR, AIDS..children that have been forcibly divorced from their families and children that seemingly got dealt the short end of the stick by the universe. Their stories are intriguing..Ishmael Beah was a boy soldier in Sierra Leone and like the 300,000 other boy soldiers, he became a killer with a truly gentle heart. At 25, he narrates his story. He knows we could never fully understand the things he has done, the things he now knows he is capable of doing, the things he has seen because he himself does not fully grasp it! But despite all this, he narrates his story so that we can learn from it..so that we can understand that the arming of children is one of the greatest evils of the modern world. Kevin Sumba lives in a shantytown in Nairobi...he is an orphan. That alone, millions of us cannot understand. He also lives with AIDS. Again, he knows we know not what his life is but he tells us anyway. Kevin seeks answers to his situation, not because he can change it for himself but because he has taken it upon himself to be a catalyst for AIDS orphans worldwide. He is determined to change not his own life, but someone else's life! For these children, the world has taken from them and everything says its time to give up but they don't! They still have fight in them...and fight they do..not to change their own situations but to change ours...us...who the world has not taken from in such magnitudes.
So I sit here typing this up and I wonder to myself...with what the world has dealt me...both good and bad...what is it I have done to leave my mark here...not to my benefit but to someone else's benefit. I try not to think too deeply into it and as I ever so casually push the thought to the back of my mind..today it refuses to stay hidden. Today my tears feel free to stream down my face as I realize I have it good...I have it so good that I cannot relate to these children's stories..I can only imagine, and sympathize. I speak for millions of us...and they too speak for millions of them! The sad part: we are speaking different languages. They say that in order to fully understand a situation, one must be able to relate to it...today I say...bull crap! I don't have to be a boy soldier to understand that war is evil..I don't have to be HIV positive to understand that this epidemic needs attention...and I sure as hell don't have to be Albert Einstein to realize that the stories of these children SHOULD challenge me, and are loud cries for help...so here's a wake up call to everyone of us: someone is clearly calling, be it the refugee that lost everything due to war; the orphan living with an incurable disease; the country that's struggling to survive politically, socially, economically; the country fighting for democracy...someone is clearly calling..and its about time we start paying attention!!