The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore

Author:Wes Moore
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780679646013
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-12T14:00:00+00:00

THE WORKER #4

The Globalist

ESTHER BENJAMIN

Peace Corps

“Why not devote your efforts to the place where you live, rather than trying to save the world?”

Or “Why help kids in America when there are kids in other parts of the world who suffer much more?”

I’ve heard people ask both questions, and there’s something valid in both. There are major problems in this country that we should all be devoting our energy to solving. There’s a lot of truth in the old saying that charity begins at home. But there’s also truth to the notion that whatever problems we have in America pale next to the problems of people in the developing world. Even the least-advantaged people in America have better access to education, more material possessions, and a stronger safety net than perhaps the majority of people around the world. A hardcore ethicist would probably say that we shouldn’t spend another dime on our own problems till we’ve solved the far more desperate problems of the starving, war-displaced, and profoundly impoverished people in other parts of the world.

I’m certainly not in a position to resolve the difference between these views, and that’s sort of the point. Each of us has to find the place where we can do the most to help. For Esther Benjamin, that meant straddling worlds—working in public service for the United States government, but using that position to help people around the globe. We follow our work where it leads us, and the greatest tools we have are portable: our minds, our hearts, our hands. As theologian Frederick Buechner put it so beautifully: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deepest gladness, and the world’s deepest hunger, meet.”

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