No matter what...we choose to see what we want to see

All of my life I have been taught to make choices. What college should I go to? Who should I play with? What should I eat? What should I read? Where should I go? Everyday holds a million choices to pontificate.

However, there is one crucial choice that I am only just beginning to grasp.

It is the choice to see.

I have grown up, for much of my life, in white suburbia. I have seen the houses my friends live in and the private school we all attended. There are buildings everywhere, a mall just fifteen minutes away, restaurants galore and shopping centers on every corner. There are very few homeless people roaming Temecula.

I have seen the upper middle class, and that is what I know. The issues and problems of the upper-middle class are all I have been exposed to and while I have learned about the poor, homeless, and destitute in school and the news, those "others" always seemed far away--in another land and maybe even another time.

I have been forced, recently, to choose to look outside of myself and my world--college will do that to you, reading will do that to you. And what I have found astonishes me.

I am naturally fascinated with people's stories. But stories of people less fortunate who live in shacks or shelters, stories of kids playing on the streets near crack houses and in abusive homes, these stories go beyond fascination to down right anger, sorrow, and sadness.

Stories of men and women being deported when they have grown up right here in Califronia their whole lives makes me wonder at the safe little life I live and it makes me want to help in some way--any way.

My family has become close with our cleaning lady over the past couple of years. Liz arrived here with very little English, but has gradually picked it up and she is doing wonderfully; her little boy Carlitos plays with us and helps his mother clean-he is absolutely adorable.

But Liz's husband, Carlos, who came to the U.S. when his country was in the middle of a civil war, was accepted with open arms, and has made the U.S. his home for the past twenty plus years, is being forced to go to court because of the recent deportation laws. If the court decides to deport him, he will be taken directly from court to a boat and won't even have the opportunity to say goodbye to his family.

What is our country coming too that we not only do not take care of our own citizens in the city slums--those who are living in boxes and in shacks, but also those that, just like our forefathers, came to us from other countries and lands out of desperation and in hope of finding a new life? What is this nation going to do about the thousands of people who aren't being protected the way that they should?

But like me, so many of us choose what we want to see in this life, and it is hard waking those around us up from a deep sleep of ignorance.

It is my mission to wake the sleeping giants of this world so that we may all have eyes to see. May I never forget to keep looking, writing, praying and doing everything I can for my neighbor.