six point eight
Wednesday, March 10, 2010There are a lot of people in the world. Too many, really.
Of these six, almost seven billion, souls, more than one billion do not have access to safe drinking water. Twenty four thousand, eight hundred and fifty five people died from starvation just today, whereas another billion are overweight. The scary thing is that these figures creep up every second.
From the moment you are born, to the moment you die, you are a number on a website, in a database. You can't escape being a statistic, but being a number means you exist, and it means that you are in a position to make change.
It is far far too easy to fall into the trap of being ordinary.
The irony is, most of the time its not because we are. Its more that to be one of the maybe 30% who live a comfortable life with a house in the suburbs and a family means that most of the time, we don't aim to be anything more. We leave the chasing of greater dreams to those we think have power: the politicians, the celebrities, the soldiers fighting battles we're content to sit at home and not picture. We don't try (hard enough) to become more than just another +1 on the counter.
I cannot truthfully say that I am not a hypocrit accusing others of being ordinary, but today is the day I start telling myself to change. We need not do something big for it to be something amazing.
So long as we're here, we might as well try.
As I was writing this, I asked my friend how I could turn this blog post into something inspiring. He told me to finish off by creating a new statistic, one more true than any number of well, numbers. Of the six billion in this world, there is only one of you.
**statistics from Worldometer
Of these six, almost seven billion, souls, more than one billion do not have access to safe drinking water. Twenty four thousand, eight hundred and fifty five people died from starvation just today, whereas another billion are overweight. The scary thing is that these figures creep up every second.
From the moment you are born, to the moment you die, you are a number on a website, in a database. You can't escape being a statistic, but being a number means you exist, and it means that you are in a position to make change.
It is far far too easy to fall into the trap of being ordinary.
The irony is, most of the time its not because we are. Its more that to be one of the maybe 30% who live a comfortable life with a house in the suburbs and a family means that most of the time, we don't aim to be anything more. We leave the chasing of greater dreams to those we think have power: the politicians, the celebrities, the soldiers fighting battles we're content to sit at home and not picture. We don't try (hard enough) to become more than just another +1 on the counter.
I cannot truthfully say that I am not a hypocrit accusing others of being ordinary, but today is the day I start telling myself to change. We need not do something big for it to be something amazing.
So long as we're here, we might as well try.
As I was writing this, I asked my friend how I could turn this blog post into something inspiring. He told me to finish off by creating a new statistic, one more true than any number of well, numbers. Of the six billion in this world, there is only one of you.
**statistics from Worldometer
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