What do I owe humanity?

For several weeks now this question has been nagging my conscious and subconscious alike.  As I wake day after day I am reminded that humanity is lost yet found, awake yet asleep,  great yet terrible.  I look across the cities that I travel to and through and I see beautiful murals of interracial children holding hands and I see gang signs.  I look and see the most vibrant flowers planted with care on the street corners in small flower beds and I also see condom wrappers, pill bottles and loads of trash thrown out of passing car windows.  What do I owe humanity?

I see buses carrying children to inner city schools where they will learn not only about the law of relativity but also the law of the land where they must fight for what they have and fight for what they want.  I sometimes see farmers riding their tractors down a poorly paved road where they will tend to rows and rows of cotton, a crop of tension in the South, and I ask the question.  What do I owe humanity?

I look into the face of my children and think of their white american privilege.   They have a mother and father who are still married in a home that is not broken.  They will never fear profiling because of their skin tone and yet they may hate their blemishes.  They will never know the struggle of abuse, or hunger, and they will still cry if one of their seven dolls break.  And then I travel thousands of miles away from America and look into the faces of gypsy children and I see pain, abuse, neglect, fear, hunger, and hope.  Hope? I stop and ask myself what do I owe humanity?

I buy shoes because they give one for one.  I recycle cans because I’m paid. I raise chickens for my own organic eggs because it’s the hipster thing to do.  I post pictures of my food, and my perfect life and yet I still ask the question what do I owe humanity?

Although I do not know which part of humanities’ debt I owe, I will tell you what I am going to pay.  I will give hope to the hopeless because I have hope to spare.  I will pay love to those unloveable because I have been loved by love itself. I will share peace because I cannot afford hate, and yet still I ask what do I owe humanity?