Etch-A-Sketch

it's close to midnight
and i can't bring myself to sleep

it's because i'm thinking about
extreme poverty
and third world country epidemics

every three seconds
a child dies
because he or she does not have enough food to eat
or is a victim of some poverty related disease

am i weird for thinking about something like this?

i ask because i seem to be the only one i know
who lets this sort of thing
keep him up

maybe i'm just making my situation
a bit more dramatic than it really is
just so i can have something to write about

i could just be doing this
so i can feel pretentiously compassionate

hopefully, there are other people that i know
who let these things keep them up at night
but are just more private about their thoughts

i don't really know

but i am here
late at night
and my mind can't stop thinking about them

every three seconds, man
every three seconds

and why do i feel so helpless?
i ask myself "what should i do?"
so i answer "why don't you donate some money to unicef or something?"
then some other part of me says "well if you donate to those places, your money's just gonna go to the people who administer the damn thing. your money's not even gonna get to a single child that you'd wanna feed."

then the argument ensues

then i imagine someone else coming in saying "well, you're thinking about those kids that you don't even know. how about your homeless cousin that's living in his car in san francisco? shouldn't you start there? or how about your relatives in the philippines that could really use the money? why don't you start with them?"

then i hear "well, they're probably not even gonna use it on food. mostly likely, your cousin will spend it on drugs, and your relatives in the philippines will gamble it away. it won't change their situation at all."

i mean, how crazy am i for thinking all these things?

by now i am going crazy with all these people in my head arguing about how i should donate the tiny amount of money that i feel i can donate to charity.

and as if i'm not going crazy enough. i hear another voice "how about writing to the government and telling them how you feel?"

so i pause.... is that really gonna do anything?
is that really the best thing i can do?

all parts of the conversation dies down....

then the thought is forgotten and my crazy conversations begin again...

and by the time i'm done writing this blog and i finally fall asleep....

well... i'm not that good at math
i can't even calculate how many kids would have died during the one or two hours that i'm wasting as i lay awake in the middle of the night
but it sure seems like alot. one hundred? two hundred?

by the time i finally fall asleep, would two hundred or so kids have died?

one every three seconds, man
that is just way too many isn't it?

http://www.one.org/

Awesome post. really woke me up.