(because we are all) Branches of the Same Tree

I know that everyone has their own circumstance and story. But I just don’t get how some people can live their lives and be satisfied with just making a living.
Let me clarify that.
I don’t get how kids my age (or anyone that doesn’t have children of their own yet) can go about just living for themselves.
This still isn’t coming out right. I’m not trying to call or single anyone out at all.

What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to just make a living — I want to make a life.
And to me, making a life means doing things that are truly, deeply, satisfying. Not satisfying like eating a whole Red Robin burger, or completing a 30-page paper. I mean satisfying like you go home and say to yourself “I did a good job today.” The kind of satisfying feeling you get after dropping a dollar in a street musician’s can, or the feeling you get after helping with a fundraiser.

I believe in living a life that helps others. Specifically, a life that helps those that never had the opportunity to live a healthy, loving, spiritual life. There are so many people in the world. We throw around the number “7 billion” and think “oh yeah there’s a lot of people.” But can you actually picture what it would look it? That many people with families, friends, jobs, pleasures, and pains?

Here’s a perspective that helps me. Picture a large sports event venue you know pretty well. For me, it’s Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington. Safeco field, at maximum capacity, can hold somewhere around 50,000 fans. (Most American professional sport stadiums can hold between 50,000 and 100,000 fans, with some going over 100,000.) If you were to put the population of the world in stadiums the size of Safeco field, you would need over 140,000 stadiums side by side by side. That means picturing where Safeco field is in Seattle, then replacing every building you can see from the stadium with another stadium. And then multiply that by maybe 100. Probably more, but I don’t feel like doing any more math.

If that’s too abstract for you, here’s a helpful image from persquaremile.com:

 

You can read the expanded article here.

The point I’m getting at is that with that many people in the world, and with the statistics I explained in my first blog post here, how can you not want to live a life that helps others in some way? We are all children of the same Father, after all. Shouldn’t we be trying to help each other out, not make this life more difficult than it already is?

 

“If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together, you can feel everything growing. We’re all living together, even if most folks don’t act like it. We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree. We are all one people, but we live as if divided.”