Just over a year ago I sat in the bar of Singapore’s Raffles Hotel and reflected on visits to some of the poorer areas of Burma and Bangkok. Here’s the post if you want to read it.
Writers Bar at the Raffles Hotel
In a few days it’s back to Singapore for another visit, and I can’t help but think how the reflections from the first trip have shaped my upcoming book. It was while sitting in the Writers Bar, idly jotting notes, when I wrote this:
But when we separate ourselves from the poor and live in this kind of opulence, we create the illusion wealth is normal. We forget the poor. It’s not that we don’t care for the poor, or that we want to exploit the poor. We just simply forget them.
The insight has stayed with me since then, and I suspect it will be part of my personal philosophy the rest of my life. It will be a significant feature of the book as I develop insights into the tension between wealth and poverty.
After this Asia trip will be two weeks to focus on the book. It’s long overdue, but having multiple jobs makes it hard to carve out time. Whether I’m writing or not, the idea that we risk forgetting the poor will always be a blessing. It will stay in my heart for the rest of my life. Hopefully the book will say it well enough to do the same for you.
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