A Man Named Mohan

When I was growing up my parents would take my brother and me twice a month to help with the Burrito Project, a group that helped prepare food to pass out to the homeless population in San Diego. While the adults made burritos and peanut and butter sandwiches my brother and I were on cookie duty. For an hour or two we would sit on the couch picking out sandwich cookies – one vanilla, one chocolate– and wrapping them up to place in lunch bags.

There was a little old man with a hunched back named Mohan who led the cookie packing. I thought he had to be at least 90 years old but given that I was about 10 I might have been off by a decade or so in either direction. Regardless, while I was at the beginning of my life, he was closer to the end of his own. But he still felt like it was worth his time to spend a few hours on a Sunday morning, sitting with a couple of children, packing cookies into little plastic bags because it meant that someone else enjoyed their lunch just a little bit more that day. 

Mohan and I were generations apart, were not born in the same country, did not follow the same religion, were not the same gender and therefore saw the world through completely different lenses. Under other circumstances we may or may not have disagreed on many things. Our identity, though, as we sat together in that house, was not defined by any of our own innate characteristics, but in what we could do for others. So in my life, I try to remember that the most important thing is not what I do, how old I am, what room I am in, who I am with or what platform I have. The question remains, what can I do for others?

May we take that energy into 2022. Happy New Year!