The difference between the "needs" and the "wants"

Today as I shopped for some things, you spread your tiny hands out of the shopping cart, hoping to grab something, anything, and hold on to it for dear life (or until you got bored of it and grabbed something else). When I tried to switch products on you, you did it, you gave your first official toddler-tantrum-in-the-isle scream! Aaaaaahhhhhhhh! I'm glad I reacted calmly and traded any way, because in a matter of seconds you had forgotten all about the first item. I did not forget the incident, and began thinking that soon you would start using the famous, "I need it" script when you want something. With that in mind, I want to share a few stories that happened to me, that together with what my parents taught me and many more similar incidents, engraved in my heart the difference between our needs and our wants by the time I was 22 years old. Granted, these are memories I often have to recall, living in the consumerist and wealthy society I live in (even in times of recession). Having these experiences altered my view of the world and material possessions. It is my hope that one day you will understand the meaning of these things, and not take for granted how fortunate and blessed we have been.

The hospital
When I was 19 or 20 years old, I went on a medical missionary trip to La Vega, Dominican Republic. I was  invited to go with a group of doctors on this trip, to be an extra pair of hands, and sometimes to sing and pray with the people. It was a short, 4-5 day trip that had a lasting impact in my life. The first few days I spent helping out in the clinic they set up. Doctors would see families and patients with minor illnesses or just for preventive care. I was working with the "urine collectors," which was already a bit uncomfortable, since I had to look at pee all morning. However, in these trips, there's an adrenaline that somehow kicks in and things that would gross me out back home, seemed less weird when I saw the need other people faced.

Me trying to help out

On the last day of the trip, I was assigned to work at the hospital, where doctors were performing surgeries day in, day out. That experience totally altered my life. I thought, "I am never going to complain about our hospitals again" (which of course, I did). The first thing I noticed was that patients were so happy to be treated and operated, they did not care about anything else, including their own privacy. Now, in the States we have many laws and rules to protect our privacy, no one would think of having it any other way, but in this particular hospital, those rules were as significant as a single speck of sand in the Atlantic. The patients were lined up in the waiting room since the wee hours of the morning, dressed in their hospital gowns. Nothing wrong with that, right? Well, those hospital gowns were practically transparent, so they might as well have been naked. The impressive thing is that no one seemed to care, even though they were men and women of all ages and sizes. Their need was far more important to them than their comfort level.

I spent all day running errands: "Bring me this," "Get me that," "Go check on this patient." I walked the hospital so many times the patients started calling me "doctor" when I walked by. That was interesting for me, an Art student, until they asked me a health-related question and discovered I knew nothing... Another thing that shocked me were the patient's rooms. I had always seen hospitals where two strangers could share a room, with a curtain in between them to provide some privacy, but you always had the option of requesting a private room. At this hospital, one room accommodated 15 or 16 beds! There were no curtains to divide spaces, there was no air conditioning system, no television to entertain you, and certainly no food service. In fact, I don't even remember seeing an emergency call button.

By the last surgery, the doctors had run out of gauzes (the ones they had brought with them), so they asked me to run to the nurses station to get some for that last patient. There I saw the nurses sterilizing the used medical equipment. They would rinse the instruments, then place them on a steel tray, pour alcohol over them, light a match and flame it up! That was it. Then, they opened a big, oven-type machine, and pulled out a hot, brown packet. In there was the gauze I needed to take to the doctors. When I took them back to the doctors, they opened it up carefully, so as to not contaminate it, and to my surprise, pulled out a gauze that had been used so many times before it had several holes in it and was already yellowish. I thought, back home I can get gauze at Walmart at 3 a.m if I wanted to. They needed it, but could not afford to get any.

That night I left the hospital around 9 p.m. and went back to my hotel room. I was starving, but not really hungry; tired, but not really exhausted; shocked, but not as numb as I should have been. I thought I was too blessed, too spoiled, too materialistic. I thought I would never ever complain again. But of course, such is the human nature, I have. Revisiting that hospital in mind is a great way to fight the temptation to succumb to my desire for wants that aren't really needs. 

This was one of the many experiences I had while on missionary trips in other countries that shaped my view of the world. I will share others in my next few postings.