Why Should I Care?

Have you ever asked yourself this question when thinking about a particular situation? Have you ever heard about an event, read a news story, or been solicited by a charity and thought; "why should I care"? I have to admit that I used to have that reaction. I used to hear about wars in far off lands, natural disasters etc and think, "why does that matter to me"? But I don't anymore. I don't because somewhere along the path of my life I realized that we are all responsible for each other in this world. When something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed and when one of us is hurting, we're all hurting. Of course I'm speaking figurative to a certain extent here, but our interconnectedness is very much a real thing.

On September 11th, 2001 many of us in North America began to think about things in a way we never had before. Even those of us miles away and in another country, felt, to some degree, the pain, fear and loss of our neighbours to the south. I'm sure none of us can fully grasp how New Yorkers felt that day, especially those who lost loved ones that day. And yet, we all feel someone connected to the victims of that horrible day.

What we can learn from that event, and any other incident where our fellow human beings are threatened, hurt and victimized, is that while there are many things we can't do anything about, there are far more that we CAN do something about. And in those cases, we should do whatever we can, whenever we can.

In the past few years I've had the chance to listen to many speakers at conferences around the country where I was also speaking. One of those who made the greatest impact on me, was Craig Kielburger. Craig started a charity called "Free the Children" when he was just 12 years old to help children around the world who were affected by, and often forced to fight in, wars around the world. Craig saw a problem and unlike many others, chose to do something about it. His charity has since built more than 500 hundred of schools around the world and positively impacted the lives of thousands of children. Why? Because Craig cared. He chose not to let his fellow human beings suffer when he could do something about it.

I had the chance to meet Craig after his presentation and after thanking him for his message, I had just one question for him, "how do you stop yourself from getting discouraged in the face of all of those whom you can't help?". After all, while his organization is doing so much great work, there are still so many whom he just doesn't have the time and resources to help. His answer was incredibly powerful to me. It provided the response to anyone who's excuse for not caring is that they can't make a difference because the problems are too big. When I asked Craig how he stopped himself from being discouraged by the sheer size of the problems facing the children of the third world, he used the words of Saint Theresa. He said, "Mark is once had the opportunity to meet Mother Theresa and when she was asked that question she said, 'God doesn't require that you succeed, he only requires that you try."

So why should you care? Because it is our duty as human beings. Because we are bound by our humanity to try. So go out there this week and care for someone else. In fact, care for everyone else. Be kind. Show compassion. Offer a smile. As Ghandi said "Be the change you want to see in the world".

To support Craig Kielburger's organization Free the Children, CLICK HERE