I DID NOT write what follows here. In fact, I can't even pinpoint the exact date of its composition and inclusion in one of my personal, on-line journals. I discovered it this morning while I was trying to find something I wrote about a certain type of bean vine for a fellow blogger. I may never find that but I just had to repost this item. I KNOW a lot of the facts included in it have changed somewhat with the passage of time but I also know they haven't changed enough to lessen the impact of the contents. Simply read it and ponder how you personally look at the rest of the world around you. Does it look the same now? I don't know how it possibly could.
A glimpse of the world . . . one that provides a new perspective and understanding.
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent. The following is also something to ponder...
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace... you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married, you are very rare.
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Someone once said: What goes around comes around.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.
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Talk about a new perspective!
I look at those last five lines of spirit-lifting encouragement and I realized that they describe my own personal outlook on life and how one should live it. If you can read those lines and honestly say that you are living your life exactly that way, you are truly liberated and free...living life as well as humanly possible. It also means that you are one immensely blessed individual.
Also, I can tell you that I don't need to wait for some special occasion such as Thanksgiving Day to be motivated toward gratitude and thankfulness. It's the main reason I feel free to sing and dance so often. Most of the time there is no one around to watch me or listen but I wouldn't care if there was. Both are a reaction to what I am feeling inside.
I wouldn't have you believe that I am in that state every moment of every day but I can say that those events are becoming more and more common as I go along.
