Privileged Kids

Assalamu Alaikum WarahMatullah

Hi,
So the beautiful sunshine reverts back to cool and gloomy this Saturday. Well, what can i say, typical British weather!
Feeling quite...anticipatory these days. Two of my sisters are expecting TWINS :O !!! Not long to go for both of them, and since as far as i know we don't have any twins in the family, immediate or far, its quite exciting.

Talking of kids - the human kind- i was thinking the other day. I don't know about you, but I have noticed that our kids (meaning those of us living in Western countries, i.e Uk, the USA etc) are pretty pampered. Even those of us who don't consider themselves well-off, really have got it all. Doting parents, abundance of food, basic and more than basic comforts, rights etc. But take off to a third world country, say Africa, India and so on...and we can't take it. A bit of heat we moan and feel swoony. A not so clean bathroom and we feel sick. Food not up to our standard and we complain. Maybe our oh so privileged lives have made us into these intolerant, complaining people. Maybe we need to sit up and realize what its like for people who live in situations a far cry from the way we live. Maybe we need a taste of their lives to bring out the strength in us. Because right now most of us whimper at the sight of a dirty toilet or a spider.

I have been to India a few times and although i don't 'click' with Indian c ulture too much, i have to say that the poor Indian kids i encountered left quite an impression on me. There's a lot of poverty in India, and children as young as 5 years old work for a living. At the train stations, their are children of 5 to 10 years old, thin scrawny children, with huge sacks of water bottles on their backs, which they sell to passers-by. I tried lifting one of those sacks, and i can tell you, it was nowhere near light. Walking the length of a train holding that sack would have been quite a strain but this 6 year old child was walking around shouting the price of his wares, all with a cheerful smile and a cheeky comment for his friend down the yard, who was also carrying a similar sack on his back. What made me think though, was that these youngsters were doing this back breaking work cheerfully and smilingly. But i saw older men doing the same job, men in their 30's, old bent backed men who were slower than the others...and their facial expressions were quite different. I saw a kind of hopelessness in their faces; this was what they had done as kids, and this was what they were doing now, decades on. This backbreaking work that probably paid them peanuts.

Our pampered kids would lift one of those sacks up to prove how strong he is, but if they were to do what those kids do everyday? I can't imagine.

Also reminds me of our Beloved Prophet Muhammads time, He and his Sahaba were the same, they worked hard, went hungry, and all to preach the faith. But i won't go on about that now; theres my Tablighi Blog for that :P

It would be great if High schools and even Junior schools had programmes where the kids can be taken to third world countries to see how how poor children live, and if they were to experience the same for a few days. At the rate we are living right now, i wonder what the future generation is going to be like.....Some genius contraption to remove a persons shoes for them, automatic combs?
Doesn't bear thinking about...