i'm a hypocrite.

almost five months ago,(has it really been that long?) my lovely city of nashville suffered a 500-year flood. i'm sure you know this by now. for a few weeks following the torrential downpours, all i was focused on was the flood: what do we do? how can i help besides not showering (no, really, the mayor asked us to not shower/shave/etc for a few weeks to conserve water, as one of our treatment plants was down.)? which of my neighbors need the most help? even now, five months later, two of our biggest sources of revenue (the opryland hotel and the opry mills mall) are still not open. i was constantly checking twitter, looking for places to help, listening to stories of lose, stories of hope, and finding myself frustrated by tweets that seemed irrelevant to such an important issue.

my friend alan said it best with the following RT:

RT @molesbrian I kinda just wanna shake all of you tweeting about nonsense and yell, "MY TOWN IS UNDER WATER!!!!!!"

i retweeted it myself. but this blog post isn't about nashville's flood.

it's about me. it's about us. it's about my brothers and sisters half-way around the world.

how can i be so upset at people not caring that my city is under water, when 90% of the time i don't care that children are being abducted from their homes and forced to be soldiers? how can i complain that it's 95 degrees on the first day of fall, when right now there are men, women, and children who don't even have access to clean water?

i'm a hypocrite.

it's so easy to ignore the problem when it's not in your face, a part of your daily life. so what can i do about this? what can we do? how can we make these issues impossible to ignore?

i don't really have a solution here. i can give $7 a month to mocha club. and i can give $7 a month to exile international. and so can you. and we should. it makes a difference. but sometimes, money isn't enough. i look at people like bobby bailey, who founded invisible children and the brave. here is someone who is using his talents to tell the world about these issues, and empowering others to act. but i don't have that kind of talent. i don't make films. i can't sing songs about changing the world. what do i have, besides $14 a month?

i have a blog.
i have a facebook page.
i have a twitter account.
i have a voice.
i have a government who wants to hear my voice (even if it doesn't always seem that way).

it's not fair that i live a life of luxury because i happened to be born in a certain country. it's even less fair if i choose not to speak out against the injustices of those less fortunate.