I feel a paradigm shift happening in my life right now. I'm becoming more intense about giving rather than taking. Just yesterday I was reading on the BBC news webpage about some woman in a camp in Sudan that lost her husband to the army and civil war there, had her eldest daughter taken when she was 13 by the army for 'cleaning duties', has 4 other children, none of who can attend school, she works cleaning rich peoples' houses and spends the money on bread for her kids. What a fucking shite existence.
The report told of a local school run by a charity there that can provide places for children to go to school but the cost for a year is 25 quid. Disgusted with myself for not doing anything to help for a long time, sitting here with my computer, and car, and nice clothes and food in the fridge and all the other trappings of materialism that I dislike, I called the fundraising officer in the UK and gave him the cost of her 4 kids schooling for a year - a measly 100 quid. He was overjoyed. We had a good chat and decided that we would try to set up some correspondence between me and the school and the kids there. I was really interested to see where my money was going and how exactly it was going to be spent and he promised me that it would go directly to the school I mentioned so that everyone there could benefit from it. I'm really excited about doing something like this. It's amazing what so little cash can do for people and how genuinely grateful they are that someone cares about them.
I'll try and post stuff here when it arrives, letters and photos etc.
Go out and give something to someone....it really does make you feel better and it doesn't take much effort. Even something as simple as getting the shopping for an elderly neighbour or doing some reading for the blind, anything, no matter how small, is better than nothing.
Peace.
ferg