Our world is better off now than at any point in human history. People live longer now and have better opportunities than those who lived a hundred years ago.
There is better health care and as a son of a common man with a smartphone and a motorbike or a car and you sleep in a room with running water and electricity, you are far better off than the son of a king who lived 500 years ago.
Those people had it bad. The same applies here, there are opportunities that your parents never had and you have them today. Your children will be better off one day or they will not depend on the foundation you are laying today, in your 20s and 30s. Things will always never be the same with every generation. It could be worse or better. That will be the work of God, technocrats and leaders. Once again, the world is far better today than it was 100 years ago.
But with all this abundance, things have never been worse in history than they are today. There are so many things to make you sad.
It starts with the kind of leaders we have, those who were supposed to serve, but instead steal from the weaker populace. Politicians with no shame, looting billions meant for the common people, while the struggling poor continue to pray for a better life in abject poverty.
Every time you open your phone, you see pain. A bombing here, a flood there. The world’s pain floods into your soul, little by little, until you forget what it feels like to be human. It is even sad that some people compete online about knowing someone who is no longer there by posting nonsense that the person was good and blah. If you love someone, you should show real love when they are alive, not showing fake sympathy online when they are gone.
Every single minute, social media shows you people smiling in expensive places, dressed in clothes you can’t afford, living lives that seem perfect and you begin to feel like your own life is not enough. You begin to feel small. You begin to hate yourself, you even feel bad about your family.
Even when there is enough food in the world to feed everyone, people still die of hunger. Even when science can cure diseases, children still perish for lack of access. You live in a world where one person spends $200,000 on a watch while another spends their whole life trying to save $150 for school fees.
More than ever, the income inequality has slightly improved because of rising incomes. But within many countries, the division is even bigger than ever before. In the same street, one family lives in luxury and another prays for one more meal. Rich and poor no longer live on different planets; they walk the same earth, breathe the same air, but live realities that are galaxies apart.
If you really want to understand how sick this world has become, just look at this one statistic, the 26 richest individuals on earth own as much as the poorest 3.8 billion people combined. That is half of the human race and the people who hold all that wealth, they could all sit in one big bus and there would be enough room left for others.
This is the world we have built, where so few have so much, and so many have nothing and the sad part of it is that it will never get better than this. You just have to appreciate your position in life because you are better just the way you are, even with your problems, you should thank God that you are still maintaining your spot in this global community.
But here is another hot truth, you didn’t see the wonders that existed before you were born, and you won’t see the miracles that will unfold after you die. The world will be much better in the next 100 years without you and of course, you will miss so much but that doesn’t mean, there will never be problems in the next 100 years. There are going to be many of them. That is the pain of being human. You only get a small window of time.
So, while you are here, don’t forget to look around. Don’t forget to feel. Don’t forget that even in this unfair world, there are still many things to be thankful for, even those that love us unconditionally. Don’t take for granted those who still care and good health is something you will never replace when it is gone. It is better than your PHD or money in the bank. We all are here, together, for only a little while. Let us not waste it. Peace.