Look into her eyes. Look at the expression her mouth makes, the red marks left by tears on her cheeks, the grit underneath her nails. Now tell me that cup of coffee I was drinking is somehow more important.
Every time you buy something you don’t need or spend time in the pursuit of a selfish goal, you’re placing a vote that says you’d rather see people suffer than sacrifice your own wants and desires.
You can push the starving children out of your head and tell yourself that you’d do more if you could. You can remind yourself that you’re a good person and that you have your own problems to deal with.
But none of that changes the fact that there are 2 billion people living on the same planet as you, sharing the same resources, breathing the same air, and yet surviving on a standard of living far below what you would consider humane.
None of that changes the fact that there are 17,000 children dying every single day from preventable causes.
There are no subtle exceptions. The coffee I’m drinking right now is a vote for poverty because I wasted $2 to satisfy my craving for caffeine instead of using that money to feed a hungry family for an entire week. Continue reading →
