If not you, who? If not now, when?

Who will change our world for the better?  How long will we wait?  Who is best equipped to take us into the future? 

Our leaders, scientists, teachers, intelligentsia, military, philosophers?  The most educated? The most enlightened?

What is the role of the average man and woman?  Billions of them. 

Let's do a little "time travel" and measure the progress of "waiting" for the first set of individuals to change our world.

In 2005 . . .
--5.15 billion people (80%) earned less than $10 a day. 
--Nearly 1 billion people were illiterate.
--One in two children in our world lived in poverty.
--The poorest 40% of the world’s population accounted for 5% of our global income, while the richest 20% accounted for 75%.
--According to UNICEF, 25,000 children died in poverty each day.
--The wealthiest 20% consumed 76.7% of the world's resources, while the 20% consumed only 1.5%.

The greatest question of our time is not how to stop the gap between rich and poor, but why that gap continues to exist.

We can:
--Map the human gene
--Stand on the Moon
--Send cameras to Mars
--Annihilate the world's people with one misplaced flick of a switch
--Cure the once incurable
--Implant artificial limbs and even replace the human heart
--Control the means of communication and entertainment in a handheld device

But we cannot end poverty.  It is on our lips and on our minds, but it is not on our agenda.

How long should we wait?  A day, a month, a year?  Ten years?  Another century?

A new program that gives loans to individuals in poor regions requires each applicant to save $50.  Once saved, this money is matched by progam funds.  It took one woman five years to save $50.  This woman also dreamed of becoming a doctor.  She has settled instead to help care for Aids patients.

What part of that last paragraph stands out in your mind?  In mine, it's the fact that she had to wait five years to save her money and that her dream of becoming a doctor was not possible.

The thing that stands out in my mind is that this set of circumstances is deplorable!  Intolerable! 

Our leaders will not save us.  But we continue to wait and hope. 

I saw a bumper sticker today with a picture of Obama on it.  Under it was the word “Hope”.

Hope is a wish for . . .

Hope is a plea for better times . . .

Hope swells up from the pit of despair . . .

But hope is not action.  Hope is not movement forward.    Hope is the cry of the anguished. 

Have we not cried enough?  Have we not hoped enough?  Have we not waited long enough?

“One minute,” my mother once said, “is a long time for someone in agony.”

Now is the only action that matters.

Now is the only action that delivers on its promises.