All Is Optional

If you attended high school in the States, you were probably forced to read Nathaniel Hawthorne in some misery-inducing form. Most likely, it was The Scarlet Letter.

This is an exchange I had with my mother and brother today.

Me: I hate Hawthorne. I’m going to poop on The Scarlet Letter.
Mom: Well, that’s not very polite.
Ham: Me too! I’m going to poop on it, too.

Dear friends, 

Will Okun, a Chicago inner-city high school teacher, is one of five bloggers who will be filling in for Nicholas Kristof at On the Ground. Though they are all excellent choices, I’m a particular fan of Okun’s after following his experiences in Africa. 

In his first post for On the Ground, Okun posted a questionnaire from the last page of Vanity Fair. I’d like to ask the same of all my readers. You can leave your responses in a comment below or in your blog. Please leave a link to your post in the comments if you choose the latter option.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
2. What is your greatest fear?
3. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
4. Which living person do you most admire?
5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
6. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
7. What is your greatest extravagance?
8. What is your favorite journey?
9. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
10. On what occasion do you lie?
11. What do you dislike most about your appearance?
12. Which living person do you most despise?
13. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
14. What is your greatest regret?
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
16. Which talent would you most like to have?
17. What is your current state of mind?
18. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
21. If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
22. What is your most treasured possession?
23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
24. Where would you like to live?
25. What is your favorite occupation?
26. What is your most marked characteristic?
27. What is the quality you most like in a man?
28. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
29. What do you most value in your friends?
30. Who are your favorite writers?
31. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
32. Who are your heroes in real life?
33. What are your favorite names?
34. What is it that you most dislike?
35. How would you like to die?
36. What is your motto?

Michael Moore has quite the penchant for being melodramatic. He certainly painted England, France, Canada, and Cuba as paragons of perfect healthcare. Yet, I know tons of people who travel to the States for health services. My dad had several surgeries here on the Pakistani Army’s tab in the ’80s. My mom is a great doctor and she offers medical care to people for as little as $1.00 some times. So, where does the buck stop?

The NYTimes published World’s Best Medical Care? – an editorial pitting several industrialised nations against one another based on information produced by the Commonwealth Fund and the World Health Organization.

The following quote really pushed things over the edge for me.

Fairness. The United States ranks dead last on almost all measures of equity because we have the greatest disparity in the quality of care given to richer and poorer citizens. Americans with below-average incomes are much less likely than their counterparts in other industrialized nations to see a doctor when sick, to fill prescriptions or to get needed tests and follow-up care.   

The quote is certainly sensational. But it’s not sensational because I chose to highlight it. What’s sensational, at least to me, is that America has always been billed this land of opportunity and equality. That’s exactly what’s missing here. Does this mean the American dream is no more? For me, this is the beginning of the end. If our poorest and richest can’t have the same level of basic healthcare, access to food, access to shelter then we have failed all of us. 

RELATED: 47 Million Americans Uninsured

I would recommend the series “Lie By Lie” to anyone interested in an informed summary of the Iraq conflict. It’s basic enough that you don’t need to be well-versed in the history to make sense of it. An excellent read.

A lot of people, including myself, need more of it.

When people are young, they are naive about a lot. That’s because they haven’t experienced enough. That’s supposed to change as we grow older. This is supposed to explain the cynical nature of adults. 

I went through quite a period of bitterness and cynicism. I thought that period was over. But, as I look around me, numerous adults are proving that wrong.

When I come home and all my mom has are stories of how my grandmother and her sister are two-faced between my dad and his brother, it’s tiresome. It’s been going on for years and it’s high time it ends. My mom says they are too old to end the feud.  

So, I’m going to end my version of it before it spirals into a lifelong resentment between me and whomever. If we don’t have the courage to say the things we truly want to say to our friends and family, then what’s the point of being friends and family? 

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