Some sober thoughts

If everybody in the world could watch this video, I wonder how many lives it would change for the better?

I recently went to a presentation by the Global Poverty Project and was astounded at some of the things I learned. Here are a selection:

•  1.4 billion people in the world live in extreme poverty
• That's nearly almost 25% of the world's population living on less than $1.25 a day.
• By 2015 the world could save 3 million children's lives if it spend 3.8 billion on malaria treatment
• Currently the world spends 5.2 billion a year on fake tans and hair loss.

What a sad state of affairs it is when society spends more money on cosmetics than they do on medicine which could save people's lives. Or when the top 1% of the population in America own around 40% of the total wealth. An individualist society fuelled by greed.

I recently watched a documentary called 'Zeitgeist' too. It brought up an interesting concept about money. Can we eat money? Can we drink money? Can we burn it and use it as fuel? No we can't.

Money is merely a barrier to all those things we do need. Especially to the people living in extreme poverty. And seeing as water, food and fuel all come from the earth's natural resources, it hardly seems fair to me that we have to pay for them.

It's the start of 2012 and it's that time where I sit down in the early hours of the morning to evaluate life. I don't know what I want from it but I know that one day, I'd like to change the world for the better in some way.

Whether that be something I write, say or do, I don't know yet.

When I grow old I don't want to look back and think I lived a normal everyday life. I want to look back and know, without regrets, that I got everything out of life that I could and I left a positive mark on the world somehow.

Of course it's an unrealistic expectation but who's to tell me I can't try?