The Questions

Imagine: you are driving along during winter and you pass a pond. You notice that there is a young child struggling to get out of the ice water. Obviously, you feel obligated to help. Note: the water is only about a foot deep. You wade through the ice and freezing water to the child and save his life. He is very grateful as are his parents. By wading through the water, you ruined a sixty dollar pair of dress shoes, tore your eighty dollar pants on a rock underwater, and gave your jacket to the boy for warmth. Despite the fact that you ruined all these perfectly good clothes amounting over a hundred dollars, you felt good about your decision and would have done the same thing in any situation. But would you consider donating even half of the amount that those clothes cost to a charity that could save more than one child? Would you even take into consideration the irony of the matter if I had not just told you?

People are selfish until they experience things first hand. But not everyone can have an eye opening experience such as this. Sometimes before we can understand or realize something, it has to be used against us or put in front of our us like bait. Basically, we have been equipped with a number of survival instincts that can in turn make us not only selfish or greedy, but we can entirely lose our minds over nothing more than a desperate attempt to make it in this world. Money is not enough to make anyone happy anyways. As much as we would like to hold onto it, we could get an even more incredible sense of satisfaction out of it if we use even the smallest amount to save lives.

I am not trying to get you to donate money to a charity. That is not my place to ask you to do anything of the sort. But remember that ironic situation next time you decide to buy something completely and utterly unnecessary.