Privileges

Privilegies. I'm gonna try to write about it today.

If you go to the root of the word, you're gonna see that privilege is: "a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most."

Other meanings such as:

2) A special right, immunity, or exemption granted to persons in authority or office to free them from certain obligations or liabilities;

3) A grant to an individual, corporation, etc., of a special right or immunity, under certain conditions.

4) The principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities;

5) Any of the rights common to all citizens under a modern constitutional government; 

6) An advantage or source of pleasure granted to a person.

If you still don't see yourself in none of this definitions that affect directly your life and others, let's try to contextualize it.

Think about The big lottery played by God that it decided where you specifically were gonna born. In which country, which family that is associated in which level social-economic you'll be in your society and which values related with religion and traditions are applied that were previously influenced by them.

First point is understanding how this luck fact that were born in a your country, social-economic status of family and which values based in traditions and religion were shared in your home society. All of these factors made you be a privileged person.

If you always compare yourself people more privileged than you, you aren't gonna be further in your life, having so many reasons to complain about your life and how underprivileged you're.

We, privileged, that have a chance to use a laptop, a smartphone, chance to study and develop ourselves, a place to sleep, food to eat, clean water to drink and have decent hygiene, have the tendency to compare ourselves to others based in material good that other have or the imagine of a sucessful life/career/family our modern society teach us. These aren't related with our basic need and they are just a prize to show to others that we are more successful in this life's competition that we are constantly searching for being the best one.

These desires that we have in being successful in our life are the envy that we have in seeing that other having material goods or "successful life" that weren't able to obtain them, once we are less privileged. The chance to buy your new car, new apartment, nice furnitures, brand clothes, new phone or show Instagram picture traveling, eating in a nice restaurant or showing in the story your new acquisitions, make we compete with each other to see how better we are from the others, just materially. Also the fact to have a diploma and work in a field that you hate to spend your time and your only motivation is earning more money and buying your good needs again and in this infinite cycle showing how much better you can be from the others for something that you have.

The first thing to be understood is that none of these material goods are gonna satisfy your really needs and realize how privilege you're in this world so unequal.

So many times in my life I was wondering if I would have born in another city in my country or maybe another rich and European country, how easier would be my life.

In my roots I already asked myself how I would be if I was white and straight hair. Since young I was taught that I had frizzy hair (in Portuguese literally translated as hard hair) that I should shave my it, because it's ugly when it starts to grow. I let "broom hair" grows up since 3 years, not having the feeling that it should be straight anymore, since then this is my physical feature that call more people attention and I really like my hair that can strongly show my roots in the way that it would be weird seeing myself differently.

My life in Europe is being so hard in the past 2 years. As my tittle say a rich homeless, I've been not having a fixed home in the past 24 months. Living in 3 different countries that I officially lived 9 months in Luxembourg in 2 different student flats and in Spain during 7 months in a shared flat and in Germany since 5 months in a shared flat that's not registered in my name. The another 3 months not having fixed place to sleep, I was homeless. Just with my backpack and the rest of the money that I had to travel around and live amazing experiences. Sometimes I had someone to offer me a bed from friends or Couchsufers around France, Luxembourg and Belgium. I also need to mention 1 month and half that I was living in a camping with my tent and air mattress while I was working in two different jobs until be able to rent a room again. Sometimes because of lack of money, I had hard times to fed myself as well, something like planning how to spend 5 euros to eat during 3 days in a camping in Luxembourg or having 10 euros to buy food in the supermarket during almost 2 weeks. These times weren't the best, but so important to give me a lesson of life how our life can be if we don't have basic needs.

Dude, even broken and eating bad, I still had money to buy food and still had money to pay a camping that I could have daily shower and sleep safe and warm in a private place using my sleeping bag and air-mattress. 

I didn't need to surfer it to start to think about it, if I would be emphatic earlier I could understand more how privilege I was. This was just a lesson that the life gave to me develop myself faster.

When every year I need to be worried about my visa. A piece paper that allow me to stay in a country/continent that I wasn't born. It's so hard to get, after living in get one year for Luxembourg, another year for Spain and I've got my currently one in Germany. In the past 3 years I'm subscribing myself in a master degree that I didn't and I won't study just for having the right to live legally. It seems to be hard, but I still have this chance, I can still immigrate legally to Europe and use my Engineer diploma to be accepted in European universities.

I'm really lucky and now I'm privileged to have a residence permit and have money to fill of all my basic human needs. This is the first time that I have visa, money and a job at the same time. I've got in a kind of comfortable moment of my past 2 years that I never had before.

In this moment I can see how privileged I am and even in my hardest moment I was still privileged, not having a place to sleep or decent food to eat, being born in a poor family in Brazil, all of these factors were still a privilege. I'm not able to compare myself what refugies suffer in Europe after leaving their countries after danger situation, living in a continent where they aren't well accepted by the society, normally don't speak the local language and having completely different traditions. 

This is just a example, but think about how many illegal immigrations occur around the world that are motivated for people looking for a better opportunity of living, for having basic needs that they never had access before. These desperate people are so vulnerable for exploitation, becoming then the new way of slavery in our current society.   

As I said it's just a matter of luck, the place that I was born and the opportunities that I had along my life gave me this moment. The problem in fact isn't because we're privileged, it's because we can't see how much we are. Having no this conscience we won't understand people that  have less privilege than us around the world or even in our corner.

I don't wanna be repetitive, but again, see the mobile mobile that you have in your hand, or the big screen of your computer that you're reading it, maybe the right that you have to live legally in the place that you're, the nice education that you could have that allowed you to be able to read, think and get a nice job, think about the the bed that you sleep, the yummy food that you appreciate it everyday or the water that you're able to drink or having your shower, clean your food before eating or making  your house tidy. 

If you need comparison to remember you the need of empathy:

http://time.com/money/3896219/internet-users-worldwide/

https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-people-world-computer-8329b1b0a638e1bd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration

http://www1.wfp.org/zero-hunger

https://homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/

https://water.org/our-impact/water-crisis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPGz1jaWvn0

My friend just try see how privileged you're, the second step is gonna see you can make people have the same basic needs that you have. Don't forget that you were just born in the place that you were, by purely luck.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/privilege