As this was my third trip to India, I didn’t feel the same sense of awe and amazement at people who live in extreme poverty as I did my first or second time. The first two trips I saw very clear problems with very unclear solutions, and I was consistently wracking my brain trying to figure out what these solutions should be. I remember the first time I saw a slum and I asked one of the priests from Mumbai why people live there. People who live in slums aren’t the poorest people in India; they could be living elsewhere. I had to come to terms with the fact that I don’t have all the answers, and that I can’t change it all.
I truly believe that every single person alive has innate human dignity. Every single person is a truly full human. I know this and I believe this and I preach this at the top of my lungs from the highest rooftops I can find. But every once in a while, I truly understand it. I had several of these experiences this summer.
We were driving under and overpass in New Delhi. These overpasses are overcrowded and constantly bursting with energy. There are informal markets and families and too many cars, bicycles, and street dogs to count. When we got stuck in some traffic though, I looked out my window. One of the street signs under the overpass had two poles supporting it. Two wome
n had hung baby hammocks between these two poles under the sign. I was in awe. The next freeway overpass had the same setup. This forced me to recognize that these women didn’t have a place to put their babies that wasn’t on the ground or in their arms. They never got a break from their motherhood.
Another time, we were in the train station in New Delhi. Sandhya and I were lugging around our huge bags of luggage, struggling to make it to the train on time. I had heard that the New Delhi train station was one of the poorest places in the world, but this was my first time there at nig
ht. As we walked through the station, there were people everywhere. There was the usual hub bub of people coming and going in a train station, but more remarkably, there were people getting ready for bed. There were full families laying out their blankets on the cold, hard concrete, and putting their children to bed. In the middle of the New Delhi train station. They had to sleep there, hoping that their children wouldn’t run away in the middle of the night, hoping that no one would rob them, and hoping that they would wake up in the morning and that everything would be ok.
While its sometimes easier for me to see someone’s full humanity in their very human struggles, I also saw humanity in the simple joys of life. One day, we were 
at a family’s house where we spent quite a bit of time. They made us tea, as they always did, and I asked if I could see how they did it. Mumta, the daughter of the family, agreed, and brought me outside. She rounded up the family’s goats, and milked one of them. As I watched her take a crazy amount of time to make a crazy small amount of tea, I felt like I had a glimpse into her life. Making tea is such a standard part of life in all of India.
This experience o
f watching Mumta make tea also drove home another topic we discussed at length with our translator/lifesaver/research partner/dear friend, Mukesh. He wanted to drive home the point that people who live in poverty in rural areas live in much closer harmony with nature than the rest of the world, without romanticizing their position. These families herd cattle and goats and occasionally camels. They drink milk from their animals. They eat food they grow in their backyards, or buy it from local markets. They are in much closer sync with the environment than the majority of the world. This realization made it blindingly clear why people living in the Global South, especially in rural areas, are being affected so much more directly by climate change than those of us in the Global North.
Having three such intensive experiences three summers in a row, I finally feel solidified in my vocation. I feel more passionate than ever about going into the field of women’s reproductive healthcare. Every time a woman mentioned she was pregnant, or had a baby on her hip, I was entranced. I was simultaneously disappointed that I could not dive deeper into their experiences, as our translator was a male, and those conversations were generally off-limits, or at least extremely awkward.
Sometimes the world feels like an overwhelming place with millions of unsolvable problems. People tell you that you are heartless if you don’t give your time here or there or if you don’t speak up about every social ill that comes your way. When you see people living in total poverty, an overwhelming sense of guilt frequently accompanies that. But as I’ve heard said many times, and I’ve now started to say myself, guilt is a useless emotion. Sitting around and seeing bad things happening and just feeling bad about things makes you unproductive and fixes absolutely zero of the problems that you feel bad about. Guilt is only useful when it prompts action, and I think I have finally hit that stage.
When I see all my friends around me getting high paying jobs at large firms, or having job security for the rest of the foreseeable future, my goal of having a job I love over a job I’m passionate seems silly. How can I try and save the world if I’m having a hard time saving myself? How can I try and find stability and security for others when my ow
n stability and security isn’t fully there? How can I justify my decisions of working towards the greater good when I can’t even pay off my student loans?
In an effort to turn my guilt into action, I justify my desires for a job that strive to make the world a more just place to inhabit. By focusing on one of the millions of issues the world sees and struggles with every day, I can hone my energy to just one, and make a difference there. I know that I will not change the world, but I know that every time I choose to live in solidarity over discord, every time I choose action over idleness, every time I choose justice over corruption and dishonesty, I am moving in the right direction