Last Monday evening Kathleen and I attended the Canadian AIDS Society’s inaugural World AIDS Day gala at the Delta Ottawa.

It was a lovely evening. Good food and drink. Napkins artfully rolled and twisted into the shape of the red ribbon of the CAS logo. Congenial company. Between the gala itself and the auction, a significant amount of money was raised for the important work of the Canadian AIDS Society. And the valuable contributions of many activists, corporate sponsors, pharmaceutical companies, and others to the fight against AIDS were celebrated.

Thanks to the efforts of those dedicated leaders, many advances have been made to improve the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS. Sometimes, in fact, it’s easy to forget that as recently as the mid-1990s, HIV infection was a death sentence. Still, HIV remains a challenge, given that we are even now a long way from a cure. Fortunately, in Canada, at least, living with HIV is now more manageable than it has ever been.

I had an experience a couple of years ago that changed the way I look at a lot of things: One of the satellite conferences organized around the AIDS 2006 conference was the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers’ Conference. The Foundation brought 70 African grandmothers, many living with HIV/AIDS themselves, all raising AIDS-orphaned grandchildren, to Toronto. I (along with 100 Canadian grandmothers, Foundation staff, and a small army of volunteers) had the great honour of spending a few days with these incredible women.

They were joyful and spirited and full of song. Their lives were far tougher than mine. (Even the lives of their HIV-free neighbours were far tougher than mine.) But as they moved through days filled with want and hard work, and illness that often went untreated for lack of money, these women were consistently able to find joy and hope. I might have found it embarrassing and even uncomfortable, had they not been so profoundly warm and accepting of me and my good fortune.

They changed the way I look at the world.

So last week I was able to enjoy a gala that raises funds to help fight a disease that has slain millions and created a generation of orphans in many African countries, and appreciate the genuine progress that was being celebrated and the value of the money being raised in support of further progress. I was able to feel grateful for, but not guilty about, the accidents of birth and life that placed me in a prosperous community, healthy and well-educated.

My time with The Grandmothers taught me to accept and enjoy my good fortune without feeling guilty. But it also taught me that I could never forget about the people—on the other side of the street and the other side of the world—less lucky than me.