Privilege

Thinking of the word Privilege the word "Opportunity" also comes to mind. When I use to think of privilege, I thought it just meant you had allot of money, and could get many things that "Average" people could not get. As I have gotten older and had the chance to travel I can see that Privilege can be defined very differently according to each person.
Like many of you after watching the first part of Boys of Baraka we see these boys were given an incredible opportunity. For these boys this is a chance for them to get out of their daily
stresses of growing up with drugs and crime all around them. We could see though that nearly
all of those boys were having allot of trouble adapting to their new environment. I am guessing most of those young men had never even been on an airplane. All of these young men did impress me because they had the will to change. I was most impressed with the older of the two brothers(I think his name was Richard), who talked his younger brother into staying at the school, he told him something along the lines of "If you go back home now you're probably going to end up dead of in jail." Richard realized this was now their opportunity to change their lives. I am still amazed at how a young man who has grown up in that kind of environment could have an optimistic look at life.
I am also reminded of the question that was brought up today in Zaher's class of "What makes people want to change?" I cant remember who it was, maybe Jen, said "Real life experience," and i think you could not have been more right! It is through our experiences that
we gain knowledge, and see different sides of things. One might even say one of the biggest privileges we take for granted is life itself.