5: Number of earths we’d need if everyone in the world had the same standard of living as Americans
13.8: Percent of girls who complete primary school in Malawi
49: The life expectancy in Chad
50: Number of American dollars required to buy a slave in Sudan in 1999
58: Number of countries where polygamy is legal
27: Percent of Indian households that own a refrigerator
250: Human rights activists and lawyers “rounded up” by authorities in 2015 in China
1,000: Estimated number of homeless in Dayton, Ohio, and Montgomery County at any time
1,000: Babies born with HIV every day around the world
21,000: People who starve to death every day
1,000,000: People who die of tuberculosis annually
5,600,000: Americans suffering from some form of paralysis
10,000,000: Syrian refugees (in and outside of Syria)
15,000,000: Women married before the age of 18 every year
20,900,000: People enslaved around the world
21,600,000: Women who experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year (i.e. performed by people lacking the appropriate skills and/or medical equipment — nearly 50,000 of these women die each year)
23,500,000: Americans 12 or older who needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol abuse problem in 2009
32,000,000: Americans who cannot read
45,000,000: Americans on food stamps
49,000,000: Americans who do not use the Internet
60,000,000: Casualties during WWII
100,000,000: Homeless around the world
783,000,000: People who do not have access to clean water
1,200,000,000: People who do not have electricity
1,258,000,000: People worldwide who cannot read
3,000,000,000: People who live on less than $2.50 per day
4,200,000,000: People who do not have internet access
I have most of my teeth. I have food in my stomach (all of it floating in a pool of fresh black coffee). I have eaten jelly donuts at Bill’s. I have a place to sleep. Better yet, I have a chair with a lever on its side the lets me recline, a laptop on which to write, an internet connection.
Einstein said there are only two ways to live your life:
- As if nothing is a miracle.
- As if everything is a miracle.
Here, where we fill our boxes with shiny golden treasures, it should be easier to see the miracles. But here, we often forget to look.
Want the citations? Check out my blog: http://fredrickmarion.com/2017/02/26/while-we-fill-our-boxes-with-shiny-golden-treasures/