Luck

Everyone says it's easy to forget how lucky we are to live in the Western world, and that we take loads of things for granted. It's true a lot of us do, and we always forget this, and yes it is a bad thing. I guess we can't help it though, we don't see poverty, death, disease every day now. We don't have to walk miles to get dirty water, we walk a few paces to a nice shiny tap. We live in a cotton ball world, far away from all the drama in places such as Africa and Haiti, and so all these bad things don't really resonate with us. I am just as guilty as the next person. I may be aware of certain things, but that doesn't mean I feel it.

I was born into a country where my future was very bleak, and unhappy. I was born to a woman who couldn't even support herself, and was living on less than a dollar a day (yeah I'm one of those stories!), but luckily I was adopted. I was adopted into a western household and given all that I needed, and each day I am grateful that I have soo much more than my fellow Sri Lankans who live in dire poverty. I am grateful that I am able to go to a good university, and not have to worry about where my next meal comes from, I am grateful that I have heating when it's cold, and not have a metal sheet above my head for a roof of a shack on the side of a road. I am very grateful that although I was born into poverty, I was plucked from it, but this is a rareity on the grand scale.

For everyone, we are not born with equal oppotunities, and it literally boils down to, where you were born. Where you were born for the majority decides your fate. And it shouldn't be that. If I wasn't adopted, then I would not have any of the things I have today, whereas because my counterpart in say the USA was born in the USA, he would be entitled to a first class education, and any problems would generally be resolved by the state. He has a safety net in the form of the government to provide for his needs should something happen. For a kid born in Zimbabwae, the story is so very differant.

It's a bleak realisation that being born in certain places decides whether you will get anywhere in life. In England, you can easily advance yourself through education, and we take this for granted, yet in some countries, education is merely a distant dream. If I was born in North Korea, man I would lead a life of suppression, under an autocratic government that is exceedingly corrupt, and have the threat of being taken to a labour camp (a gulag in Russia), should I say anything vaguely out of line.

With the whole tuition fees arguement, everyone is pissed off at the prospect of entering the professional life crippled with debt, it's shown that everyone seems to believe that they have the right to go to university, and I suppose if we have the ability, we should be able to, but for the vast majority of teenagers in this world, university isn't even a dream because it's that unattainable, because the state has no provisions for them. The West has definately become exceedingly greedy at the expense of other nations.

It saddens me, that a lot of people have soo much given to them, yet they don't make use of it, or seem grateful for it. I don't always seem grateful for a lot of things, I am not saint.