Today I met a woman who is truly living a life of courage, tenacity and hope. She lives in a war zone and helps women to support themselves and their families. She goes to work every day down different routes so that she decreases the opportunity for those who don't like what she does to hurt or kill her. She lives the decisions that she makes every day, and she is aware of their implications. Her temerity is tempered by realism. She is scared, and she is angry and she despairs.

I got to spend time with this amazing woman, and as much as I enjoyed being near her, listening to her, I felt unqualified to exist near her. In a way, being near to her made me feel like a spoiled, whining child. I had nothing of worth to share with her from my life, nothing that I could give to her that had the power and importance of what she gave to me. I have lived a life of privilege tempered by social conscious and responsibility. I am not embarrased of the life I have lived to this point, and that I was lucky enough to be born in a safe place and time. I have a fair enough understanding of odds to know that I am damn lucky in drawing the life I did.

She told me stories that broke my heart, and all I could do was listen, but listening seemed like too little. How should I respond to stories about rape, murder, societal corruption, the overwhelming and paralyzing affects of poverty? Every day she wakes up and faces the visceral, intellectual and emotional cost of war head on. It reminds me of visiting the zoo as a small child. I always wanted to go see the rhinocerous pen, because you could see on the painted metal door where she rammed it with her head. The door was dented and the paint was chipped, and looking at it you knew that it was a small battle won by the animal, because at some point the zoo stopped repainting the door.

Every time I get in a car,or buy a piece of fruit from New Zealand I feel as though in a small way I am enabling the war to continue. Every time I turn off the radio, ignore the newspaper or watch a stupid sitcome I want to do penance for my escapism. How can I justify wanting to ignore the world, when I live safely and calmly in the wealthiest nation in the world? How can I stand next to women who risk their lives every day to make a world that does not notice their existance a better place?

I have a responsibility to these women, to do my best from where I am and with what I have, to honor their risk, their courage, their fear and their pain every day with the life I lead.