It occurred to me today that we are all coming at this thing called life from different vantage points. We’d all do well to remember that.

This morning, I was ashamed.

I didn’t start out ashamed. I started out upset. That was part of what ended up getting me to feeling ashamed. The anger.

I got a call from a parent in the school district, saying that their student was having problems with their Chromebook. So, I asked for some basic information, and I logged into my inventory system, for tracking which Chromebooks get checked out to which students, and I came to discover that the mother who was calling was the mother of the student who’d had multiple Chromebook damage incidents over a relatively short period of time. As it turned out this morning, the mother was describing a bit of physical damage to her child’s third assigned Chromebook since the start January of 2020.

While I was on the phone with the mother, trying to contain my anger –how many Chromebooks can one student break, really?– I told her that I would set aside a Chromebook in our front office for her to pick up to use in place of the Chromebook that was needing repair. I felt pretty magnanimous, considering I should have been reading this lady the riot act instead.

That’s when she told me that she wouldn’t be able to come and pick up the device. She then asked me if I would be able to bring it out to her at her home.

I’M SORRY?!?! YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?!?!

That’s what I was thinking. Instead, what I said was…

“Well, I should be able to do that.”

And on my way out to this student’s home, I thought about what I was going to say to the student and their parent about repeated damage incidents and continuing grace from me and the well’s starting to run dry, etc., etc.. You get the drift.

However, when I arrived at the address that I was given by the mother, I was not prepared for what I ended up seeing.

I saw squalor. That was the word that jumped into my head as I was absolutely floored by the living conditions of this family. Of course, the anger melted away. The bitterness and frustration, those things melted away, as well. I walked up to the door and gave them the Chromebook replacement that I had to deliver to them. I felt so bad for them that I was significantly more speechless than I normally am. I dropped off the working device and I collected the damaged device, and I left as quickly as I could.

Less than a mile away from the home, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, other than to call my wife and tell her the story of the encounter.

All I could think about, as I made my way back to my office in my school building, was how sad I was that there are people in the world who are living lives of poverty, and how thankful I was to have a pretty good life. But also, I was ashamed of the anger that I’d had –harbored in my heart– during my trip out to drop off that Chromebook. Anger based on my ignorance of the situation.

Do you ever stop to wonder what percentage of anger in the world is based on ignorance of the facts?

* * *

Any of you who know me very well at all understand that I attended the University of Notre Dame after graduating eleventh in my class from Buchanan High School in 1994.

I was a staff brat, which was to say that I was attending the University primarily in thanks to the staff benefit that allowed for the children of staff members to attend the University for a fraction of the cost. There certainly wouldn’t have been any other way for me to attend Notre Dame, coming from a middle class family as I did. In fact, on the day when I got my acceptance letter from Notre Dame, I remember my dad saying that he felt like he’d just been given a substantial raise.

One of the most unnerving parts of that experience at Notre Dame for me was the culture shock. As a staff brat, coming from a middle class world, there was quite a bit of adjustment involved for a small town kid thrust into the midst of several thousand upper class fellow students on a college campus. I suppose that all students feel like they have some adjustments that they have to make.

But I had to adjust to the lifestyles of my fellow classmates, in addition. Seeing how they lived, and understanding that their lifestyles were not the same as what I’d grown up accustomed to, was something that was always constantly in the back of my mind during my years at Notre Dame.

Now that I’ve come to think of it, I would imagine that the feelings that I had at Notre Dame –feelings like I was a fish out of water– are probably similar to the feelings that my students, who come from backgrounds of poverty, feel when they exist in our school for the time that they are there.

* * *

I have no doubt that there are probably people who would look on the life being lived by the mother and daughter that I visited from my school district, people in the world who would look at what I saw, and think to themselves, “Man, they’ve got it pretty nice.” But, I can you tell you for certain that I was thinking no such thing. Additionally, I am sure that there are people who would have considered my upper-class fellows at Notre Dame to be some particularly lowly sub-classification of humanity, as they peered down on them from up-above. Again, that wasn’t what I was thinking during those college years of my life.

I guess squalor, like so many other things, is relative.

In the event that you ever start thinking too highly of yourself, I suppose here’s the remedy: consider those who are further down the road than you. Conversely, when you start to feel like you haven’t got much at all, you could always peer backward at those who are striving to get to the place where you wish you were beyond.

I guess, in short, the lesson that I learned today is to count my blessings. To be thankful. I might not have everything that I’ve ever wanted, but I’ve got more than a lot of people. As most of you will be reading this right around the Thanksgiving holiday, I’ll challenge you as I got challenged –> consider the place that you’re at in this world and be thankful that you are more fortunate than so many.