Give & Live.

     One of the nicest people I know recently emailed me with a question. She had a paper to write and the topic was "living simply so that others may simply live". She wanted to know if I had anything to contribute. You might notice that in almost all of my posts you can find this sentence: "I had never considered/thought about this before." Well, here we go again. I had never thought about this before. The reason I'm writing this post is not to push my ideas down your throat or to force something upon you that you disagree with; I do that enough. This is simply for the sake of pondering what could be.
     This wonderful person gave me the example of giving up coffee so that you could donate the money you usually use to buy it. What a good idea! Many people deem coffee as a necessity, but there's other ways to have more energy. Something as simple as giving up coffee to be able to give your money, or even donating your own coffee to the food bank, could make someone else's life a little bit easier.
     I had to spend a few minutes trying to figure out what to say to her. Living simply so that others may simply live. Hmmmm. And then it hit me! Well, they hit me. Two things that fit into this category quite nicely, if I do say so myself: 1. Vegetarianism and 2. WWOOFing.
     Let's start with numero uno. This reason for vegetarianism might seem a little juvenile to those more experienced in the field, but I think it deserves just as much credit as any other reason. Giving up meat is easy. Yep, I said it. Last November I decided to stop eating meat one day and I did. Completely. It's really not as hard as it seems. If you are reading this and considering vegetarianism, I believe in you! So, let's say you give up meat. On average, you alone will be saving the lives of about 5,000 animals. That's a number averaged from a few websites, but still! Can you believe that? How incredible would it be if we could all save that many lives? So, only eating vegetables will let animals live. That's pretty cool, I think.
     And WWOOFing! For those of you who aren't familiar, WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. The deal is, you are a volunteer. You travel to a farm (which can be anywhere in the whole world, by the way), you help them and they give you food and a place to stay. My best friend is in Belgium right now and he recently WWOOFed. The farm he stayed at was permaculture oriented. I don't know too many details about the farm and I don't want to give any false information, but from what I gathered, the conditions were pretty basic. There was no running water and no heating whatsoever. But! Because my fantastic friend went and stayed with these people for a few weeks, he was able to help them insulate their roof for the winter. So, he gives up showers and toilets and warmth, but these people get to be a little bit warmer when the snow starts to fall. Isn't that nice?
     Again, this isn't meant to force you into caffeine withdrawals, vegetarianism or WWOOFing (if it does, though, I would not complain), it's simply to make you think a little more. What could you give up to make someone else's life better? And how much better would the world be as a whole if everyone thought about this topic for five minutes?