What we spend in a heartbeat

What we spend in a heartbeat is another man’s wages for a day or even a month. What we spend on things like cigarettes and beer on a daily basis takes somebody an entire day of hard labor to earn. What we spend in a heartbeat could end up saving somebody from going to bed hungry that night or could even save a life. The difference in the spending potential between the people from the lower economic strata to even the ones in the middle is mind boggling.

In the last two hundred years, the disparity between the rich and the poor has gone up tremendously. An argument to this point by skeptics would be that the population has also magnified itself but that’s really not an excuse as the ratio of the poor to the rich stands at more than 50 to 1 whereas in the 18^th century it was no more than 3 to 1. In some of the poorest parts of the globe, more than 20000 children die every day because of poverty, starvation and the lack of clean drinking water.

Did you know that more than 50% of the world’s population lives on less than 3$ a day, and only about 20% of the world get to spend more than 10$ a day. Now think about the last time you spent some money on alcohol or cigarettes or even some food at a nice restaurant, and think about all the things that you buy that you could do without on a daily basis and think about how a hungry person’s face  would light up at the sight some generosity. It does not require a huge sacrifice on your part, all you have to do is not go to the movies this one time and give away some part of that money. When was the last time you did that? A better question is did you ever do something like that?

Money has become the new god in our world and I’ve often come across people who say that money is everything. They say that nothing is possible without money which is true to some extent but how much money do you really need? How much luxury and comfort do you really need? Why are you stashing up money for tomorrow when people are dying of hunger today? A lot of people will say that they work hard for their money and they deserve it but they really have no idea of what hard work really is. They have never been out in the sun struggling to make ends meet, is it a fault of the poor that they are poor? Laborers in many countries are paid less than a few dollars a day for work that we couldn’t even hope to achieve in a week for a lot more money. How is this fair?

Can you even imagine earning only a dollar or even less every day for a good 8-9 hours of hard work? Can you imagine not being able to afford even the basic three meals a day? Can you imagine living in projects and slums and bearing the elements as you pray for a better day to come when you will no longer have to fight against everything to make sure that your stomach is full and the body is sheltered? Have you thought about the plight of the families who live in cramped up spaces, conditions that we wouldn’t even let our pets stay in?

The saddest part in all of this is that the ones who don’t have money know this reality that money does not really make all that much of a difference. I challenge the lot of you with this, Go to a poor man who has very little and ask him to share some of whatever he has; the poor man will share it without a second thought. Now go to a man who has everything, the works, a car, a house, expensive clothes and all of that and then ask that man to share some of whatever he has and see what happens. I leave the rest for you to think about.