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Christmas for all? Fri 28-Dec-2007

Posted by xgeorgio in Aid, ReliefWeb.
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I’m not sure when or where I first heard this story, I believe it was in one of Paulo Coelhio’s books:

“When I was young, my father took me to the beach. We were walking along the washing waves on the wet sand. All around us, there were numerous starfishes that were washed ashore and now they were getting dry under the hot morning sun. Then my father knelled down, took a very small starfish inside his hands and placed him very carefully inside a small pocket of water. I asked ‘..Why are you doing this..Soon the waves will wash it off again higher and it will be drying on the sand..What does it matter?..’ He smiled at me like he understands and said ‘..It matters for itself..’ I felt a lump coming up my throat. Suddenly, I wanted to get all those little starfishes in the entire beach and throw them back at the sea, as far as I could. I’ve never forgotten that feeling.”

Then a few months ago I saw CNN’s Anderson Cooper talking about his experience when visiting Africa:

“Little children, wrapped in a sheet and burried alongside the road, like seeds, with no sign, not even a picture for their parents to remember them, as if they never existed, as if they never mattered..It’s a haunting thought, knowing that these parents see their children fading away like this and not being able to do anything about it, not even keep something to remember that they ever existed in this world.”

I remember that I immediately recalled the starfish story, totally unrelated yet so identical. It’s words like these that makes you feel a bit guilty every time you spend money on trivial things or dispose uneaten food or throw away an old blanket.

It’s not bad to have fun and be happy, especially in these joyful time of the year. In fact, it’s an obligation for the lucky people in this world to make use of their fortune of being healthy, having plenty of food to eat and money to buy new clothes whenever they want to. But it’s wrong to think that these things are trivial and that’s what everybody else does too.

Be happy of what you have and appreciate it because it is not for granted. If you have a place you call home and it’s not flooded, if you are not sick, if you have food to eat and water to drink every day, if you don’t have to work from five years old and you can go to school for six of more years, then you are in the lucky 20% of this planet. Stay focused on what matters and remember that what you see as “insignificant donation” may as well be the life of a single “starfish” somewhere in the unlucky 80% of the world.

Best wishes and Merry Christmas to all.

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