I Would be Nothing

 “I would be nothing!”  I heard this so often from our students in Kenya.  “Without Kenya Keys, I would be NOTHING!”

I felt myself recoil from such a notion.  No human is NOTHING.  Especially this bright, hard-working student in front of me.  How can he/she say they would have been NOTHING without Kenya Keys? 

I want to correct them.  Tell them of their inherent value.  After all, I was raised on the humanism of the Renaissance and the teaching from my religious background that “the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”  I want to contradict this notion that they would have been NOTHING.

But then I am struck by my own smugness, my high-sounding notions, my privilege, the privilege that allows me to rest comfortably in my belief that no human should view themself as ‘nothing’.  

I have been never been suffocated by the grinding reality of extreme poverty.

I have not known poverty’s all-powerful ability to erase even the best of intentions and desires. 

I have never had a stomach that has had to eat on itself out of desperation. 

Or had a mind that becomes a foggy blank, for lack of calories to spring it to life.

Such ignorance causes so much of the arrogance and misunderstanding in this world; this world that is growing ever more full of contempt for the “other”. 

I can’t fix it.  But hopefully I can at least catch it in myself.  That’s a beginning. 

And I can renew my efforts to join with countless others to make sure these students who, by their own admission, would have been nothing, become amazing “SOMETHINGS.”