“A
Single Lucid Moment,” by Robert W. Soderstrom describes what life is
like in Papau New Guinea and shows the deep love and care that villagers
from the small village can have towards others across the globe. As
Robert and his wife, Kerry volunteered as Peace Corps volunteers in New
Guinea, they were welcomed by the villagers that lived there and
although weren’t as nearly as fortunate as Americans, lived a carefree
life. They
had no knowledge or information about the “outside world” at all; they
only knew about the world that they lived in, which is nothing like a
world with many more problems.
One day, when they were telling stories, Robert passed around a
picture of his hometown, Chicago, with two homeless men on the street.
The villagers were shocked and all wanted to rally to help these two
men out of their misfortune. They were so interested in the topic of
homelessness that they went into action to see what they could do, and
even tried to contact the U.S. government. They
really wanted to make a difference even though they had never heard
about this problem before. The article says, “In their simple lives, it
was impossible to comprehend that humanity was host to such an
injustice.” They genuinely wanted to help these people as much as they
could, so they offered to make homes for them in their country. Even
though in the end they couldn’t help the two homeless men, they still
continued to work on projects to help the less fortunate people in the
world, even though they are some of the least fortunate people. The villagers of New Guinea were very caring people who were caring to potentially anyone and helped whoever needed help with an issue of their own. The personality and kindness of these people show that America can act caring towards everyone and if the countries of the world don't only care about themselves, then the world might actually be able to live in peace.
I
think that the piece “A Single Lucid Moment” (by Robert Soderstrom)
effectively shows the loving care that the villagers from Papau New
Guinea show towards homeless Americans. It was amazing to me that the
villagers had such confidence that they could make things right for the
two homeless Americans that they saw in a picture when they hadn’t ever
heard of the concept “homelessness,” let alone knew of their
backgrounds. Many people outside of their country or village would
think that such a small group of people couldn’t make an impact on such
an important topic, but the villagers were extremely confident in their
thoughts and had no question about not being able to make an impact.
This is very inspiring to me because I have always heard that a single
person can make an impact, but not many people listen to that advice
very well. The people in the village didn’t think twice about trying to
make an impact even though many people probably doubted that they could
make any difference. Even though they didn’t realize this, the
villagers were probably just as less fortunate as the homeless people in
the photograph, but they still wanted to help. This is inspiring to me
because they never gave up, so another question I had was what kind of
other projects did the villagers work on, since they wanted to help in
other ways instead of giving up? I think that it is very interesting
that different cultures don’t know about some of the concepts that we
grow up with in America.
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