Disappointment

"...the feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one's hopes or expectations."

This weekend I was chilling out with some students and we chatted about ending poverty (it's been a bit of a recurring pattern over January, February and March). This weekend, like others, we spent time thinking about the root causes of poverty. Why it exists is complex; a combination of factors that affect billions of people across our globe. A lack of power and real inequality between human beings. 

This week someone told me to write a blog with the title 'disappointment'. Because I like accepting challenges, I thought about it for a while. And on reflection I realise that disappointment is a great word to describe how I feel about our planet sometimes. The feeling of sadness that's caused by the nonfulfillment of my expectation (and hope) that the world should be better. More equal. More fair. Without inequality.

At the start of my internship I thought I was passionate about ending poverty. Actually, I think I was more 'enthusiastic' about ending poverty; someone interested but not necessarily changing to do anything about it. But the more time I spend chatting to other people about poverty, the more I recognise that I'm not content to sit back and watch poverty continue and that my disappointment with inequality means that I want to act.

I think that when we become passionate about something we integrate it into our lives because we believe it's truly important; something I talked about it in one of my Fusion blogs last year. My twitter account contains the tagline: "developing a passion for justice" because I don't think that I'm quite there yet. There's more that I can do. 

And if I'm disappointed with our world, I'm going to be disappointed if I don't do something about it. When I started journeying at the beginning of this internship I expected to become more excited about ending poverty but I didn't anticipate that it would mean leaving my comfort zone. Only buying fairtrade and UK food means sacrificing some choice; but others in the world have less. Only purchasing vintage and fairtrade clothes means sacrificing some style and clothing items; but others in the world can't afford the clothes they make for us. And writing and talking to my MP is a scary thing to do; but I've got a voice I can use where others don't. 

In the grand scheme of things, these sacrifices are worth it if we can make a difference. And (even if it's cheesy, even if we're sometimes sceptical) working together, we really might be able to change something. 

I talked about this in my blog titled luminosity. It encourages me not just to be disappointed, but to act:  

"Yours is the earth and everything in it. Enough for you and everyone."