Inspiration

It's now been over two years since I first arrived in India, bright-eyed and hopeful. When I first got here, I was guided by unbridled optimism (we're going to change the world!!!)... which was duly checked within a week of being here, as I struggled with the cognitive dissonance of my daily life - where I worked 100+ hours a week at a social enterprise, yet felt powerless in the overwhelming face of poverty in a city as developed as Hyderabad. As an Acumen fellow, I blogged about my horror at realizing my apartment guard slept in our garage, along with his young son. How naive that post seems now! Yet these still remain the hard questions... do I give to beggars on the street? -- what about if they are mothers with babies, when I'm on my way to LifeSpring?

Still no easy answers, but this week I got a jolt of inspiration when watching Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Some highlights, which made me think of the importance of the work we're doing - even those days where it just feels like a small drop in a vast ocean:

"Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us. But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.

We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The nonviolence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their faith in human progress -- must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith... we lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

...So let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.

...We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth."