Going to the beach while the sales team is working

Last weekend while my sales team was working I was flying to the beach.

On Saturday morning while they were in the market, walking from agent to agent, convincing them to register more customers for Kapu, I was jumping around in the waves, playing cards with my friends, and going to a fancy beach-side restaurant.

A typical sales team member in Kenya makes about $500 per month. My round-trip flight from Nairobi to Diani - leave Saturday come back Sunday - cost over $100.

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There’s no good reason why I should get to fly to the beach while the people on my sales team don’t. I am just incredibly, unfairly, undeservedly lucky.

What do I do in the face of this unfairness? There are different voices in my head that tell me different things:

Voice #1: “You deserve this. You work really hard, you have cultivated the right virtues in yourself, and you have taken advantage of the opportunities you have. So you deserve to fly to the beach when others can’t.” Despite the best efforts of voice #1, he hasn’t yet been able to convince me that I deserve the incredible luck I’ve had.

Voice #2: “Just forget about it. Don’t worry about people who have such different lives than you. Ignore it.” Voice #2 was much more compelling before I had never moved to Kenya - now that I live here and am confronted with how hard people work for such little pay, he’s quieted down a bit.

Voice #3: “You are so self-indulgent. You have so much when others have so little. Didn’t Jesus tell you to sell all that you have and give to the poor? There are some people within the Effective Altruism movement who live on like $10,000 a year and give everything else away. Why don’t you do that?” For right now at least, I’m principled enough to follow this advice.

Voice #4: “It’s good to go to the beach. But it is sad that not everyone can do it. So in your leisure, be grateful for what you have. Don’t let your spending on luxuries get out of hand. And in your work, work hard to help other people in the world have the same material abundance you enjoy.”

I try not to listen to voice #1 and voice #2. I’m not strong enough to do what voice #3 tells me. So I’m left trying to follow the advice of voice #4 as best I can.

I get stressed about my job sometimes. But I don’t work weekends, I have job security, and I fly to the beach. What do I have to be worried about?