Why not me?

Felipe is what they call a guerrero (literally “warrior,” more accurately “hustler”).  He swaggers through the labyrinth of the San Victorino street market like Jerry McGuire strolling through a floor of office cubicles--high-fiving and fist-pounding the watch makers and the shoe salesmen, not once losing his sense of direction in the dizzying mayhem of tent stands and food carts.  The streets are in his blood. 

For a middle-class suburbanite, his skateboard and tattoos might as well be a pedestal and superhero cape.  He is all that is cool.  Real.  Legit.  Street.  He’s worked at every rip-off clothes store and cigarette outlet, he knows all the tricks, he’s heard all the lines, he’s seen all the types.  

I found myself rummaging through my catalogue of memories in search for a credential-boosting scar story to tell him as he led me across the plaza, shielding me from the oncoming zombie attack of vendors with a light saber arm wave.  Being picked on by my older brother?  Too juvenile.  Surviving on only potatoes during a motorcycle trek in the Andes?  Too “study abroad”ish.  Losing a battle with my insurance company?  Too First World.  Losing my religion? Too existential. Losing a friend in a car accident?  Too personal.

There hasn’t exactly been a lack of silver platters in my life thus far.  The poor performance of my mutual fund is hardly considered a tribulation.

The philosophical “Question of Suffering” concerns coping with the meaninglessness of futile injustices.  But while the suffering of innocents is the most infamously senseless of life’s mysteries, statistically speaking it is exactly the suffering that seems to give life meaning--or at least perceived value.  There are hardly any Third World countries at the top of the global suicide rankings.  The top 15 includes countries with some of the highest standards of living in the world (including Japan, Finland, and South Korea).  It is those who do not suffer from life’s basic trials that lose the ability to see purpose in living.

For We The Privileged, the question sounds less like “Why me?” and more like “Why not me?”   If it is scars that make someone “legit,” if it is battles that strengthen the soul, if it is suffering that gives life meaning, if it is death that inspires life... where does that leave the white LIberal Arts girl?  

Felipe smiles at me like Gandalf smiling at a hobbit--wise and amused.  I will never see the world through his eyes.