Pondering on Materialism, Suffering, and Survival

Yesterday was a city clean-up day. In addition to a chipper truck that mulched our huge pile of branches, dumpsters were dumped every 3-4 houses in the neighborhood. Just like last year, I'm amazed how quickly all the dumpsters fill up with people's trash. It's a little disturbing. It left me pondering about our materialism, reminding me of this Material World book that shows people's possessions gathered in front of their homes. It's amazing to me that some families don't have a nice cupboard of food, but 99.9% own a TV.

Today I finished reading an inspiring book, Alive, about the Uruguayans who survived a plane crash in the Andes in 1972. They were at the tops of the mountains for 10 weeks, eating the flesh of the victims as their only nourishment. The story is one to read. I often get annoyed with the drive-by media coverages of current events; I always want to know the whole story, including what lead up to certain decisions and what happens after they were rescued. The media doesn't usually follow stories in such detail. This book gives me all of that. I would change a few things about the way it is actually written, and add some things to keep straight who is who and what happened to them, but otherwise, it's a good read.

I've pondered about the survivors and victims throughout the last few weeks as I've been reading their tragic story, at times with tears in my eyes thinking about the suffering they went through, for their faith and courage to survive, for their families who were tormented with no knowledge of their loved ones' whereabouts, and for their touching show of patriotism when finally coming home.

It's interesting that clean-up-dumpster day and the end of this book came about the same time. This quote from the book is the take-home message for me:

"They all agreed, however, that their ordeal on the mountain had changed their attitude toward life. Suffering and privation had taught them how frivolous their lives had been. Money had become meaningless... Each day that passed had peeled off layer upon layer of superficiality until they were left only with what they truly cared for: their families, their novias, their faith in God and their homeland. They now despised the world of fashionable clothes, nightclubs, flirtatious girls, and idle living. They determined to take their work more seriously, to be more devout in their religious observances, and to dedicate more time to their families."

In a letter written by a father of one who did not survive the plane crash, is another take-home message.

"We invite every citizen of our country to spend some minutes in meditation on the immense lesson of solidarity, courage, and discipline which has been left to us by these boy in the hope that it will serve us all to overcome our mean egotism and petty ambitions, and lack of interest for our brothers."

I'm sure these quotes can be echoed in many survival stories of our world. I'm grateful we have such humbling, courageous stories. I actually thought of their trek up and over a mountain as I went running today. I have only been running like twice in the last year, and it felt nice. But, I'm not in the best of running shape and when I wanted to stop and rest (Winston's stroller is getting heavy!), I thought of the strength of the near-starving expeditionaries and kept going.

And as I finished reading just a few minutes ago, my thoughts are again on their lessons of frivolousness and materialism, and what really matters in this life--God, family, country, hard work, serving others.