Caring is sharing, the importance of meaning in life.

We live in a very fast paced lifestyle, as “millenials”, we grew up in a society that focuses on working and doing as much as possible in the shortest period of time, we are the creators of the multitasking and omnipresence, I remember even mentioning it as a strength on my resumé “I multitask” what a dumb. The point is, that we grew up to care nothing about ourselves, fix things for today and not plan ahead, being successful is seating in front of a computer and work 8 hours or more, the more you “work” the more successful you are, at least that’s what they sold me.

I was raised by baby boomers, the children of the industrial world, where work is important, most important than family, but as a latin american family, religion is also very important, I won’t go deep into this topic, but it has something to do here… believe me. So we were thought that working for hours is what makes us “human” and those who live in poverty are just lazy people, people who are not willing to work and doesn’t care about their children, religion and more. They are lazy!

However, if you really think about it, our perspective of life is so short that we often oversee the reality, I was born in a middle class world, all we care about is to have more and work hard to do it, no matter what, invest all of our money in possessions and formal education to be “good citizens” to be “good employees” to have peace of mind, or at least, try to. The reality of the vast majority of people in my country is way different, more than 56% of the population live in poverty, at least 18% of the population have not enough money for food, health services or shelter. It is very hard for us to understand it, until we face it. Having to save money for food instead of education, or having to decide either to eat or go to the doctor are day to day decisions of people living in this situation, and that is for the lucky ones who have some sort of income, what about of those who have no opportunity at all? what about of those who have no formal education and no one wants to hire? In Mexico, living in poverty is way worse than you could ever imagine, you are invisible to the government and the society. The core values of the actual working class, are work, buy more and work harder, helping, or doing something for someone else is unthinkable, and sometimes impossible, why should you care about doing something for somebody else, if you barely have time for yourself?

I believe we have to reshape our mindset and see how can start thinking as a society, besides think as individuals, caring is sharing, and once you start sharing what you have, once you stop criticizing and start acting you’ll see that the value of your life and your wealth will increase 1000x faster than when thinking only about buying the next BMW or getting an iphone.