MtM 40 - If the world ended today

Since the dawn of human history, something like 110 billion human beings were born into this world and very few lived over 100 years. There are 7 billion people on the planet today and a staggering 60 million die each year. Sixty million people! That comes down to 160,000 a day. I remember hearing this saying when I was young, "We live alone and we die alone.” Since then I haven’t stopped wrestling with this thorny concept. What puzzles me is everyone must swallow the bitter pills of life without any certitude about what follows. Whoever devised this system thought it best this way, though everyone alive would beg to differ. However, any change we are likely to make would be catastrophic. Since we are obviously blind about eternity, we would inflict this myopia onto the planet. Already we have failed to balance the crowds without homes, jobs and food with skyrocketing rents, overpaid executives and mountains of dumped resources. 

Now is the right time to encourage our children to devote part of their life to the pursuit of improving the human condition through social justice. They will soon appreciate how immensely gratifying it is to make a personal contribution through inclusiveness, compassion and respect. Then they will enjoy significantly lower levels of anxiety and commensurately higher satisfaction, confidence and happiness. Marcel Proust was once asked, “If the world ended today, what would you do in your last hours?” He replied, “Life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened with sudden death. Just think how many project, travels, friendships our life hides from us, made invisible by our laziness, which, certain of the future, delays them incessantly. But let all this threaten to become impossible forever, how wonderful life would become again!” May he inspire us to progress towards what will still have meaning for us in one hundred years.

Fooled by financial prowess, advanced nations fight constantly a greed that fosters segregation and perpetuates exploitation. Today’s unsustainable addiction to economic growth hides the quicksand of stress, indebtedness and waste. It’s easy not to sympathize with the plight of the dispossessed. Besides, who decided to equate mankind’s progress with economics? What will it take to challenge these abusive structures? When will the ruling elite reform their priorities to respect the intrinsic rights of the people? If the health of a generation is judged by its children’s values, we are all witness of our predecessors. So are we ascending in a virtuous cycle or descending in a vicious one? I am an optimist and encouraged by observing our youth’s idealism and concerns. The issue isn’t whether they receive enough education, but whether they are suitably guided by their parents. Remember, if we don’t inspire their future, the world will do it.