Privilege — how have you used yours today?

“Congratulations! If you have the privilege of growing up with shelter, clean water, available food, a safe environment, college education, a career that pays more than $90 a day, and you’re using your phone with wifi to read this right now, you happen to be among one of the most elite groups in the entire world.

You have the opportunity to play “life” at a different level than everyone else who is still fighting basic physiological survival standards. Just like I’m doing right now, you have the opportunity to focus on philosophy, sociology, psychology, and all trends that give you the biggest leg up in our society.

Unlike those who are simply trying to survive for another 24 hours by finding shelter, clean water, food, and safety; you can focus on the more creative and innovative parts of life.

So this begs the question: What do you focus on in life? What is it that you do with all of your privileged time and brain power? Many of us get so caught up with sports, entertainment, hobbies, pop culture, and our own circle that we neglect to question what impact we can make if we used our privilege to help others. Unfortunately, we were not born in a world where helping others is considered a popular measure of one’s stature. Instead, we commonly look towards economic wealth and collection of material commodities as a measure of purpose.

We treat labels as a stamp of approval of how important we are to the community. Hardly do we ever question how it was achieved. If we instead focused on measuring each other and ourselves off the value we add to humanity, I guarantee a great majority of our time would be spent differently. Just imagine a world where we had hobbies like feeding the hungry instead of playing “fantasy football leagues.” Imagine standing around the water cooler bragging that you’re #1 in your humane society league instead. Wouldn’t that make a whole lot more sense for us to use or privilege on those less fortunate instead of pandering to the super elite?

I’ve decided to share this message for those who are not aware of the opportunity they have in this world. There is so much we as humans take completely for granted these days without even realizing it. If we want to make a major difference in the wealth, knowledge, and well being gap in this world, we need to change the way we treat privilege at the top end of society.You can either be a boss and parade at the top of the mountain or you can be a leader and help others who had to take a harder path than you did.

At the end of the day the choice is yours. I trust you’ll make the right one.”

This piece was published by Jeremy Green (@therealhalfrican) on Instagram, October 30th, 2017.