Thankful Challenge - Day 7 I am thankful for my winning ticket in the birthplace lottery. There is nowhere on Earth that I can think of that I would rather have been born. Thanks to this one stroke of good luck (or the grace of God, depending which way you look at it) that happened before I was here to influence it, I was born to loving, stable, hardworking parents in a small country town in one of the safest countries in the world. By Western standards, my parents were not particularly wealthy and they worked hard for everything we had, but we had everything we needed and many things we wanted, on an Australian scale, we had plenty...and on a global scale, we were very affluent indeed! I am ever so thankful that because of my privileged birth in Australia I am not one of the millions of women who woke this morning wondering if today would be the day that I or my daughters would be violently raped, or the day that my son would be gunned down in the street, or the day that one of us would stand on a land mine or that my husband would be beaten to death because he belonged to the wrong ethnic group or was seen being talked to by the wrong people, I did not wake in a crowded refugee camp or on the cold ground, exhausted, literally starving and with miles still to walk for the hope of safe refuge. Australia really is the lucky country, there are few other places on this planet which enjoy greater political and financial stability. Personally, I think our PM is an idiot (along with most of the members of parliament), but because I live in Australia, I can say that publically, without fear of retaliation. And credit where its due, thanks to our government (past and present), we get to complain that the roads arent good enough and squabble over funding for health care and education and grizzle about taxes (first world problems), while other populations are too scared to complain that the average weekly wage only covers half of the average weekly grocery bill, or that you cant do anything which involves a government official (at any level) without offering bribery, or that despite international aid, the government officials get fatter and live in flasher homes while the general population is literally living in slums and eating what they can scrounge from the garbage, or there is no real government to complain about, just two or more fighting armies who care very little about the fallout. Because of our gun laws and culture, I did not send my daughter to school this morning wondering if today would be the day some kid brought a gun to school and shot up the place (OK, so actually shes at home with a stomach bug...but you get my point)...or if tonight will be the night a drive by shooting sprays our home with bullets. I am thankful for my winning ticket in the birthplace lottery and for my childrens winning tickets too.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 23:32:41 +0000
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