Caring

Caring. I think of caring when a person is willing to take time out of their own life to improve another’s. Many people think of large acts of kindness as being caring, but it can be different. The smallest deeds of kindness are often the ones that make the biggest impact. Throughout my life I have been exposed to mournful things including poverty, gender inequality, and general lack of respect towards other people.

In my personal experiences I have seen poverty and money deprived areas. The most recent was about two years ago when I traveled to the Dominican Republic to teach English. I was surrounded by the worst poverty I had ever been exposed to. This influenced my view of  “poor” or “underprivileged” cultures. I built many friendships with the adorable Dominican kids we were teaching. The kids were eager to learn English so they instantly liked us when we showed up. This made it easy to build great relationships with the kids. After getting so close it was very tough to watch the kids in their poverty struck lifestyles. For example, we showed up one day to teach the afternoon lesson and saw that two brothers had only a single hotdog bun to share for lunch. In America we are so privileged with the options we have, therefore, many people are never exposed to the extreme poverty others around the world endure everyday.

All around the world people regularly get judged, whether it’s because of their race, sexuality or gender. Over the past I 00 years many different freedom rights have been set. Women’s rights, black rights, gay rights, and voting rights are a few examples. One that has not been fully passed is gender equality. Many things today are portrayed towards a certain gender rather than towards both genders equally. Traditionally, men did all of the hard tedious work while the women took care of the cooking, caring for children, or cleaning. It is currently still viewed as abnormal to have a woman as the main income supplier for the family, even though we have opened our thoughts and beliefs. Many countries, including Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway have made progress in gender equality by not centering certain things towards a single gender, and these actions have only made the country stronger. Although we have made great strides in this area, our country has some more hard work to do for gender equality.

Respect is a broad term, as it can be used or interpreted in a plethora of ways. The way I think of it is to have a deep admiration for someone because of their abilities, qualities, or achievements. It seems there is a lack of respect towards other people all over the world. I wonder if this is causing the misunderstanding and hatred we are seeing today. What if we could all look at the person next to us with a new admiration and curiosity?

I’ve gone over three things that are close to my heart when it comes to caring. In this paper I highlighted world problems that disturb me and how we can resolve them. I believe the world can not only be positively altered by all of us coming together as one, but individually as well, one small deed at a time.