Find a new balance



To survive we should stay in balance (photo by RBisschops)

Someday soon the earth will welcome her 7 milliard inhabitant. Usually something like this will lead to a party. Is there time to celebrate if we know that within forty years there will be 2 milliard more inhabitants in this world?

It is a strange world. There is an enormous wealth for one part of the inhabitants, while another part has to survive each day. People eating so much that they will get all kinds of diseases. So called nutritional diseases which refers to a lack of nutrients because those people eat too much processed foods containing lots of fats and sugars but hardly any vitamins and nutrients necessary to have a healthy body. Other people get ill for the same reason (lack of vitamins and nutrients). Not because they eat too much but because their diets are too narrow and contains not enough energy.

It’s like people complaining about the weather. In moderate climates this could be talk of the day while actually those people should be happy about the ‘extremes’ they have to live in. Especially because their ‘extremes’ do not last that long and because they are not that extreme compared to real extremes like the floods in Bangladesh or the draughts in Chile.

People complaining about long traffic jams when going out shopping for – again – new clothes should think again when they know people have to walk a few hours each day to fill-up their water supply.

While European consumers waste 179 kilo of foods per person each year people in developing countries should be happy to eat this amount of food each year. It seems not a very efficient way of distributing food over all the earth’s inhabitants.

We in the West might have to reconsider what we complain about. Of course we cannot and should not compare our lifestyle with those of others living in completely different circumstances. But we should at least consider if what we complain about is really worth it. Maybe it is just a problem which can be blamed by the wealth we live in.

So maybe we should just celebrate the birth of the earth’s 7th milliard inhabitant. Let’s celebrate it with the poor and the rich, the fat and the frail, the healthy and the sick. Let’s share our stories and create respect. Not just during the party but also afterwards when reconsidering our behavior and becoming more responsible and acting more respectful towards our co-occupants. Starting now.