Just found this blog-errific tool. Click here to find out your financial standing in comparison to all other people on Earth: http://www.globalrichlist.com/
Did you try it? Isn’t it INSANE? They tell me that my family’s income puts us in the top 0.503% richest people in the world, and the world holds more than 5.9 billion people poorer than me. Are they kidding? I was astonished, because we’re decidedly middle class and we often live paycheck to paycheck. We have to plan for even modest purchases like back-to-school clothes for two kids, this year’s new choir dress and choir dues for my oldest, and little luxuries like that pair of Crocs (trendy expensive shoes) my youngest wants me to get for her. We may be adding gasoline to the “luxuries” list now that it’s at $3.19/gallon (a temporary high, I hope). And I’m kinda dreading telling my husband that I just blew $47 at Blockbusters last night buying and renting some movies and getting a bit of candy for the kiddos. (Hi, honey! Just kidding! It was totally free!)
But because I know we’re not rich, this little online tool this does have the intended effect of showing me just how little some families have. Compared to my average lifestyle, so many people have so much less. It encourages me to dig a little deeper to give back. Thought-provoking, isn’t it?
And to think that just last week I was at one of my favorite yarn shops, contentedly plunking down another $40 for some yummy yarns and feeling a little self-conscious for blowing the money — like I should be hearing “Hey, Big Spender!” blasting behind me as a personal soundtrack and mild rebuke — when I was astonished to hear the woman ahead of me spending six HUNDRED dollars and change on some luxury yarns and needles. Eh, what? I think I gaped like Jethro, because I know I felt wistful, a bit envious and entirely shocked. I joked with the yarn shop owner afterward, asking her why she even bothered waiting on shrimpy little buyers like me. She assured me there were far more small buyers like me than the heavy-hitter shopper who’d just left the shop, and she treasures all her customers. (Smart and kind-hearted yarn shop owner, eh?)
God bless the shopper who had the wads of money to spend on yarn; it’s her money and she deserves to spend it any way she wants — generously on herself and, I hope, generously on others. I don’t mean to imply a criticism of wealthy folks; I’m just talking about the train of thought she cranked up for me.
I’m grateful for the abundance we have in my country, my state, my city, and my household. While I’m not going to stop buying nice yarns for my knitting enjoyment — I know the poor will always be with us no matter what one person does, so I won’t deprive myself of that handicrafting pleasure — I am going to think more about ways I can help others. I think this year for Christmas I’m going to sit down with each family member and pick a charity we can support for the coming year — whatever charity they care the most about — and make a more conscious effort to give. I give painlessly at work with blood drives and monthly payroll deducations for United Way, and my knitting guild regularly knits for local charities, but it would feel nice to make a more deliberate effort more often.
That train of thought that I’m experiencing and that I’m hearing from others is one of the few things I can be truly thankful to Hurricane Katrina for. I’m already seeing local fundraisers up here in the Memphis area to benefit hurricane victims, and it warms me to see it.
As I’ve heard more and more stories coming from the Gulf Coast about people stealing portable generators (our relatives were warned to buy sturdy locks), the rapes and suicides that happened among the squalor and desperation within the SuperDome shelter, and looters shoving aside dead bodies to plunder homes, I’ve also been heartened to hear about heroic efforts to care for others, neighbors checking on elderly people who live alone nearby, businesses that have set up websites to help family members who were separated during the evacuation efforts find each other again (and distant people check on whether Gulf Coast friends and relatives are still alive), people buying supplies not just for themselves but also for friends, emergency workers doing the nauseating but necessary task of collecting the bodies that are rapidly decomposing in the Southern heat and storing them in cool stairwells and other secure areas until proper resting places can be found, ordinary people doing extraordinary things to rescue lives, and friends with chainsaws doggedly cleaning up fallen trees on their own property and then widening their circle to help friend and neighbors and strangers.
I don’t think that bad behavior is excused by a crisis like this, as I’ve read on some blogs, any more than I think people should be sainted for doing what is the good, right, and decent thing to do. Let’s celebrate the good and also recognize that weaker people may need encouragement to change or containment to keep from hurting others. Pressure reveals out the character strengths or flaws that already exist in a person. Strong people have the fortitude to help both themselves and the world around them. Weak people crumble and may even prey upon others.
As the saying goes, “The same fire that melts butter also hardens steel and purifies gold.”
Let’s be steel and gold, shall we?
Technorati Tags: charity, abundance, gratitude, Hurricane Katrina, integrity, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm
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