DAY 88 – PRIORTIZING LIFE

When I had graduated college five years ago I went to a party afterwards at the parent’s home of my best friend in college. That afternoon I spent time talking to the grandmother of my friend. We talked about her life and I learned things that my friend never told me about his grandmother’s amazing life. I found out that this woman has been at the forefront of making a real difference in the lives of people all over the planet.

When she was seven years old and her parents were walking with her to a nearby store she saw a man asking for money for food. She did not know why he was doing this and her parents said he had no money and no place to live. She then asked her parents if there were other people also homeless and without food. When she was told that were many other people in the same situation it affected her so much that she wanted to change this. This little girl, with the help of her parents, started a group in her town of young children aided by their parents to help people who did not have food to eat or a place to live.

She continued on with helping people in her teens and twenties and created a list for herself of issues that she wanted to prioritize her life around. While most people center on one or two issues, she had the instinct to know she was developing an expertise that could be beneficially used to help her fellow human beings in many different situatios in their time of distress.

Looking at human difficulties, whether local or in other countries, she became an advisor to various organizations that had worthwhile goals into how to mobilize their communities into actions that altered the human landscape for the better. This took her to over fifty countries around the planet with each one coming away for the better because she wanted to help.

This wise woman told me that in every case where she devoted her time to helping make life better for other people she had to prioritize one problematic issue over other problematic situations. Often she would go to places where the difficulties people faced were not as monumental as somewhere else. The point she was trying to convey was that just giving your time to helping others is all that matters.

She also made a point of differentiating between spending our precious time dealing with issues that would resolve themselves in the near term at the expense of devoting ouresleves to issues that are of much greater significance because of their long term consequences. Just seeing what is right in front of us does not necessarily make it one’s only priority. Short term thinking can blind us to the bigger picture of life. Without the ability to distinguish between short term difficulties that will be gone sooner than later we often forget that certain problems can become magnified over time and will not be gone without a concerted effort of intervention.

She reminded me that when something happens that can affect human beings in every corner of the planet, as did the covid 19 pandemic, it does not distinguish one human being from any other human being. When this happens it is the signal that our collective human efforts need to deal with it right at that moment. In all life altering events that threatens the well-being of humanity it is absolutely necessary and essential to become united to defeat such a world wide situation for the sake of one another.

The same thing can be said about climate change in the twenty-first century. We know that the lives of every human being alive today as well as the lives of human beings in future generations are at stake. Prioritizing some of our time to insuring the earth functions optimally for life itself needs to be at the forefront of everyone’s consciousness and actions that are as monumental as the monumental changes that climate change creates.

After talking to this woman who had done so much good in her life I now realize that I have to prioritize my time towards certain issues whether they are smaller or larger in scope so I can make a huge difference in the lives of other people and in how the earth functions.