Adventures in Heartbreaking Economic Chasms...

Two tidbits of information I picked up recently.

1) From the Entertainment section of the news:

" Some of the world's wealthiest food lovers have flown in[to Thailand] for ... dinner, which carries a price tag of US$25,000 a head." (Read the article here.)

2) From some other reading I've been doing:

"Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every five seconds." (Read more here.)

I'm not going to rant about how the money from that single meal could have taken all 16,000 children for a meal at the Outback Steakhouse. ( I realize this is not a rational solution, I'm just making a point.) While the injustice of it all really angered me, it also made me think "Hold on, Janice. You can't just blast the uberwealthy, and let yourself off the hook." And so, the quest continues: to find a way to live life, concious of the needs of others.

I think Gandhi put it succinctly when he said, "There is enough for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed." The task at hand then, is to distinguish between the two. It's easy to say "I don't need $200,000 worth of wine at a single meal." It's not so easy to say "I don't need more than one coat. I don't need quite so many pairs of shoes." See, right there, I can't even bring myself to say I only need one pair of shoes. And so, the quest continues...