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| Community meal at Slab City |
Our culture is severely inflicted with me mentality, where sparing even the slightest moment is met with the question "how will this benefit me?" Yesterday's discussion of medicating children highlights repercussions when individual's in a family or community setting focus solely on meeting their own needs. Parents will sacrifice their own life in order to save their child from harm, yet will neglect the child's emotional and psychological needs daily. I witnessed a man come into the casino yesterday badly wanting to play poker and "only had an hour because his 10 and 7 year old were home alone." He explained poker being a "better" addiction than the addictions he's had in the past, yet continued to play well past the hour he'd planned. Although an extreme example of selfishness, our thought should not be "at least I'm not as bad as that guy," but rather should be "how can I sacrifice my time and energy more?"