This week, 1,500 Australians are living on $2 a day for all food expenses to raise money and awareness for the 1.4 billion people that live in extreme poverty. It is an amazing initiative and we have raised over $250,000 already. To find out more info, go to the Live Below the Line website, where you can learn about the issues and sign up yourself.
Alternatively, you can sponsor my efforts by credit card, direct debit or cash. Email me for details at p.madan@theoaktree.org.
But what really gets me is that 1.4 billion people (thats 60 times Australia's population) do this every single day, and not just for food.
So my experience is only a tiny, minuscule snapshot of what reality is like for one fifths of the worlds population. So really, I should suck it up and deal with it.
But, this experience has taught me that extreme poverty is a barely liveable condition that effects one so, so much. It is an awful way of living and should not even be allowed to exist on our planet. The fact that it does makes me sick. The fact that we have the resources to fix this, makes it worse. And the fact that so many people are so ignorant to these issues and can live and not do anything about it, just makes me so angry and yet so, so sad.
27 days in and I am always tired. I never have energy or I swing into a mood of hyper activeness. I can't concentrate at uni. I can't do anything that requires too much strength. I can definitely not work to my best ability or communicate properly either (my friends would agree). It has come to a point where I have realized that if one wanted to live properly, be educated and work and enjoy proper relationships and just even enjoy a day of life, they would not be able to do it on this much money, or less. It is not just poverty, it is extreme poverty. And it is awful.
We are so lucky, living in the world we do, the way we do. Yet it is so, so by chance that we were bought into this world, and not into a family who fights for food everyday, or who cannot afford to send their children to school. We take it so for granted that we get up in a comfortable bed in the morning, fill our stomachs up with food and then go to work, or uni or school. And yet what do we do? We complain. We complain we don't have the new iphone. We complain we haven't eaten since lunch. We complain we don't have enough time. Or too much homework. Or that we hate the city.
Well, why not look at the positives? Why not turn it around and say, hey, sure I don't have enough time, but I LOVE what I am doing, so who cares? Or, hey, I have heaps of homework, but look at where it will get me? Or hey, the city may suck, but it is also pretty beautiful, no?
Or why not do a good deed? Or something nice for someone else?
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
~ Dalai Lama
I gave directions to an old man the other day, and a guy who had been looking came past and said, "it's nice doing something nice, isn't it?"
Good deeds are so underrated. And sure, we may have to put ourselves second, but what is wrong with that? There is so much more than this world that we live in, there is so much beyond US, beyond our own selves, so much we can learn and that we can do. And there is just an enormous amount of impact we can have on other people's lives.
In a scrubs episode I was watching, it showed how people had done good deeds for others, for example, Turk had given up the only night he had to himself, to spend time with his best friend JD. And he asked himself, when he had so much work leftover that he needed to do and was yelled at by his boss, was it worth it?
The same thing happened to me. I had had 3 exams in a row and was looking forward to finishing early at work, because I was dead tired, hungry and stressed, but when I saw that my friend, who was closing and finishing really late had an exam the next day, I offered to close for her. I went home after midnight. And that's when you ask yourself, was it worth it?
Well yes. For Turk it was worth it because he saw his friend JD happier than he had been in ages. For me it was worth it because when I went to my friends singing exam the next day and heard her perform, I knew that I had made the right choice.
Because in order to make the world a better place and rewind all the cruelty, unfairness and sadness that humans have brought about in the world, we must start with ourselves. We must help others, and take a little less and give a little more, because this will not only make others happier, but it will also improve our own personal well being and happiness.
Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
~ Buddha
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