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A Quotation I Like: "The mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one." - Thomas Carlyle
The older I get the more fascinated I am by our inner connectedness, how what happens to one affects others either in positive or negative ways. And how it would be wonderful if we concentrated on things that lift all of us up together. But...I don't usually get too serious here and I don't want to make this preachy, so I'll just show you a few things I've seen lately that have made me think about this a bit more.
(You may have already seen this. It's really an ad for the series on population that National Geographic is doing this year, and it's been out for a few months, but it's also fascinating stuff, so I'm including it here):
And of course, there's the "If the World Were a Village of 100 People" phenomenon that began back in 1990 when Donella Meadows, a professor at Dartmouth, used the phrase "If the World Were a Village of 1,000 People" (emphasis mine) in a newspaper article. Since then the 100 People idea has been passed along and grown. Read more at 100people.org or watch this video:
Recently, designer Toby Ng created a series of posters based on the concept. Here is one of them.
As mentioned, this isn't a new concept, but it's a very useful one (I think). Sometimes the world just seems too big. It seems as if we can't really accomplish anything or truly help each other, but breaking things down into balance (the first video above) or a smaller number (the 100 people concept) makes me feel as if each one of us counts and each one can make a difference.
Did any of these figures surprise you? (Note: I don't know where the actual statistics come from, but even if they're not perfectly exact, they're probably somewhere close to reality).
Trying to decide what I might do next to make a difference. Any ideas on little things we might do that would help others? Things you've done? Things you've heard of other people doing?
Have a wonderful day!
I love your blog title "People Matter (and there are a lot of us". I read an article a while back about a medical aid worker in a refugee camp. The interviewer asked if he ever felt it was hopeless - the number in the camp was close to a half million. The aid worker said he went about his work saving one life at a time & I remember thinking how over time all those ones must add up. Doing something is always better than doing nothing.
ReplyDeletemarypres@gmail.com
Mary, that's a wonderful example. It's so easy to fall into the "nothing I do can make a difference" mood. I think that way far too often, but there are people all over the world making a difference. As you mentioned, "one life at a time" adds up to a lot of lives.
ReplyDeleteI read an account of a prosthetist who went to Haiti after the earthquake and just spent all day fitting people with artificial limbs, one after another. What a difference he made to the lives of the injured!