"You don't have to live like a refugee" - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

When I was in high school, Tom Petty's "Refugee" was in heavy rotation on the radio. (Of course, back then we didn't have CDs and digital music players.)

In the United States of America, most of us don't have to live like a refugee. But there is an opportunity to find out what it's like.

Doctors Without Borders is setting up interactive refugee camps in major cities. This is a great opportunity to see how people live when they've been displaced by war and genocide.

It's also a great opportunity to decide whether this is how we would care to live.

If a refugee camp is not your idea of how you want to live, see whether one of the following resonates with you:

• This is the sum of duty: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. (Brahmanism)
• Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.(Buddhism)
• Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law of the prophets.(Christianity)
• Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you. (Confucianism)
• No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (Islam)
• What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. (Judaism)
• Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain and your neighbor's loss as your own loss. (Taoism)
• An' it harm none, do as ye will. (Wicca)
• That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself. (Zoroastrianism)
• Be excellent to each other (Bill & Tedism, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)

Perhaps, by putting ourselves in the place of the other - even for a moment - we can see how we are blessed, and consider how we can share those blessings with others.