T.S. Eliot

Re-entry shock.

It's a well-known post-travel-stress syndrome, one which we all dread as we board the plane back to the world we call home.

As I boarded the plane to Geneva, to friends and comfort and family's arms, apprehension set in.

Was this going to be amazing?
Traumatic?
Empty?

After the chaos of 20 million souls in an oven of dust and poverty, how would Swiss impeccability feel?



One afternoon we went out for lunch. Driving through the countryside, lush green fields shimmering in the crisp autumn air, the yellows and oranges shining against a backdrop of grey and blue, I settled against the leather interior and listened to the music crooning from the speaker at my side.

Comfort.

Enjoying a delicious meal and sipping chilled white wine, I wondered that these pleasures brought me no guilt. Shouldn't this feel more wrong somehow?

At one point a young mother and her 3 month old baby came into the restaurant, the proud new grandmother in tow. Sitting at the table next to ours, dressed in Gucci sweaters, gold and pearls glistening, they quietly ate their foie gras and sipped their wine, riches and oppulence oozing from all sides.

This did not bother me.

It didn´t bother me, because for once that wealth seemed to be about something more. Those riches meant education, and health and above all opportunity.

As I watched the young family heaping love and affection, nutrition and intelligence and time on the small boy in his mothers arms I couldn't feel angry or guilty.

In the face of all the disadvantaged children I've encountered in recent months, here finally was a child with a chance.

More than a chance.

That child, at birth, had all the endless possibilities of the world layed at his feet. After so many months of impossibilities and hopelessness, here, in front of me, sat hope.


Beautiful, clean, diamond-encrusted hope.

In the face of that, all the seemingly empty lives of the ´West melted away. With every opportunity that boy was given, I could forgive all the mindless daily rituals of the comfortable masses.

And when Grandpa Prosperity arrived with his perfectly groomed pooch, complaining about his fifth lost cellphone of the year, it didn't ´need to bother me.

That someone with the means to save a village was crying over proverbial spilt milk didn't make my blood boil or tears flow. Because that wealth was being used for something good right here at home.

Because all that gleaming wealth, empty or not, was giving one child all the chances in the world.


Is that enough?

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time