Privilege

During the past two days, I've had an opportunity to think about privilege. It has been smoky in Sacramento for the past several days, but this smokiness has been little more than a nuisance to me. In fact, I've noted a few times how amazing the smoke looks, something like a gray fog that, when it's thick enough, turns the sunlight orange. The smoke hasn't bothered me any more than being a slight inconvenience at having to put on a smoke mask and reduce the amount of time I spend outside. I am increasingly coming to realize how much of a privilege that is.

Not all people have smoke masks. By the time we heard on the news that some fire stations had smoke masks, most of the local fire stations were already out of stock. There weren't any masks at the first place we checked, or the second, or the third. We did, eventually, manage to get smoke masks, but only because we had smartphones that could tell us the location of every fire station in Sacramento and a car that could drive us to them. We were privileged to have been lucky enough to hear that news report in time. We were privileged to even have a TV at all and to have enough leisure time to watch it and spend an evening tracking down masks like it was some kind of scavenger hunt.

Others, I know, aren't so lucky. There are those who are too poor to own cars or smartphones or televisions. There are those who don't even have a roof over their heads or any other indoor space where they can get away from the smoke. There are those who have lost everything they owned to the fire that is causing all this smoke, and there are those who never owned that much in the first place.

Privilege begets privilege. The privileges of owning a car and a smartphone and a TV have bought my family another privilege: the privilege of having smoke masks. Those masks (and access to rapid transportation and many indoor spaces) will help us stay healthy, despite the smoke in the air outside, and that health will continue to buy us more privileges, like strength and lower healthcare costs. I've never thought of my family as being wealthy, but we do enjoy a great number of privileges which work together to get us even more.

I don't deserve the privileges I have, and those who don't have them don't deserve not to have them. None of us deserve many of the blessings or the afflictions that come into our lives. Sure, there are some blessings we "earn" through righteousness and some afflictions we "earn" through wickedness, but none of those account for the blessings and afflictions we were born into. I was born into a fiscally-afloat family of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the most richly blessed country in the world at a time of unparalleled technology, some of which I can afford. Most people only have a few of those blessings, if any.

The question now is what is to be done about this realization. I was born to privilege. What should I do with it? Of course, I can spend some of it satisfying my own desires; I don't think too many people would fault me for that. But what else? I should certainly use my blessings to help others, but how? It seems foolish to give everything away, even for charity's sake, but I should give some, perhaps more than I already do. And I should also give service. I readily use my smartphone to answer others' questions and communicate with those who regularly need help, and I serve with my health and strength as well. I suppose I could use my blog and Facebook page to give a voice to the voiceless, though I'll have to choose judiciously which voiceless I give voice to; however, engaging in internet politics is hardly the best use of anyone's time. Still, I should try to think more about what additional good I could do with my privileges, and I'll have to try to muster the will-power to do it.

This unfortunate smoke experience has helped me to realize how fortunate I am. Now, I should try to find ways to share my good fortune with others.