Am I my brother’s keeper? 2
21st May 2009
Hello lovely people
I once heard about a couple that chose to terminate their first pregnancy because the foetus had a serious genetic defect that would have ensured a short and very painful life for the baby. Everybody was in agreement that the couple took the right decision.
There was much joy when they had a second pregnancy. All the relevant tests were done to ensure that this time round the baby would be healthy, and all the test results looked good. When the baby was born, it was healthy – or so it seemed until about six months later when a rare dis-ease was diagnosed. The parents had to decide whether to provide very expensive medical care that would only extend the pain and misery of the baby, or whether to limit the medical care and spend as much loving time as possible with the baby before it would pass on.
Now is that bad luck or what? I do not think so. In this instance I believe that the issue for both the parents and medical staff was to experience the decision over life and death in this dimension. If for example a judge and a court of law had to step in and make this decision, there would probably have been another little soul that would have forced the parents and medical staff into the same situation until they eventually experienced the gratitude of understanding what they had to learn from this situation.
In this book, The Bookseller of Kabul, one of the characters is a young woman who is desperate to do something with her life other than live the Cinderella existence that her male relatives and her culture expected of her. She enrolled for classes to improve her English and to her horror then discovered that the classes were open to men as well.
This was after the Taliban had been ousted and when it was acceptable again for men and women to be in the same room, even though still with specific conditions. For this young girl the thought of being in a room with men that were not her relatives were so abhorrent that she never returned to the lectures. You can guess what her future held for her career-wise.
To be continued.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
