Tom, my feelings aren't abstractions at all; they are very real to me, and I try to keep them that way even when the feelings I have are painful or unpleasant. Talk about painful! The things you said about Kuwait reminded me of a front page article in the newspaper yesterday about the growth of child prostitution in the third world. Right now there is a meeting in Stockholm, the first ever, to figure out what to do about one million children every year entering the sex industry, children lifing in excruciating poverty, with their families disintegrated. In countries that have suffered through wars in Africa, in particular, the "survival sex" trade flourishes as many children are forced to fend for themselves. This story just gets worse--most of these children live on the street, the rate of AIDs is astronomical, the children are hungry and in pain from how they must degrade themselves to survive. We're talking about children as young as 5 here, incidentally, and one report from the congress in Stockholm details how U.N. staff members in Mozambique were involved in trafficking and sexually exploiting children between 1993 and 1994, recruiting young school girls for prostitution, filming pornographic videos, arranging live sex acts with U.N. peacekeepers. The price for sex was $1.00 with a condom; $1.10 without. In Asia, and now also in Africa, affluent men from western countries with a penchant for small children come on organized sex tours, commit debasing acts which are major felonies in their own countries, and then fly out quickly, back to their regular lives, without any fear of retribution. Imagine how these children must feel, the feelings they must shut down forever in order to survive.
We are very lucky in this forum because we are affluent enough to have the time and luxury of treasuring our feelings, of paying for therapy when they get too painful, of taking our money and our lives and doing different things with them, of not working for awhile, of reexamining our lives. Please, everyone, remember that even thouigh some of the things you are going through may be very painful, you have the true privilege of having your feelings, and be thankful for that every day. |
