Johnny, Harry and Lucy

The President walks in to a school lunchroom, sits next to little Johnny, who has no lunch and is very thin, says, "Son, you need to eat something" and throws money at him. The President then gets up, walks over and sits next to Harry, who is eating two lunches, says "Son, you are obese. You need to stop eating so much" and throws money at him. Finally, the President, out of money, stands up and walks over to Lucy, who just finished paying for her lunch. "Sweetheart, I need your money. The country needs your money. Johnny and Harry need your money." Lucy says, "But sir, I have no more." The President then takes her lunch.

This is a simple analogy. President and Michelle Obama are entrenched in a government funded childhood obesity program, which is no doubt a very honorable thing to do and makes for great PR. Meanwhile, there are multiple programs to end hunger in this country. Welfare, food stamps, WIC.... yet hunger is still a problem. From the Oracle ThinkQuest Education Foundation:

"One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night."

Does anyone, other than me, see the irony?

"But What If" for today

I had two off-the-wall crazy ideas on the way in to work this morning, one of which I'm writing about now and the other I'll save for another day.

But what if....

Bad things happen to everyone. Terrible tragedies happen because of things we can't control, such as the weather or another person's actions. And then some days, we have bad days when little things go wrong over and over again. Maybe we lost our debit card, all of the traffic lights turn red when we approach them, we lose a button on our shirt, and the coffee maker stops making coffee. We joke about being cursed by our adversaries, as if there is some magical voodoo power people can conjure up to hurt their enemies. Yet (stay with me here) several times in history, we hear of people being cursed (check the Bible) by people just like you and me, and we chalk it up to silly superstition. I'm thinking... what if every time we have a bad thought about someone, every time we wish something negative upon someone else, it releases a hypothetical "curse" into the air, one that we have no control over who it lands on. What if, instead of Satan reigning down some evil upon us, or God enacting punishment upon the earth, we are really just doing it all to ourselves? What if we are the ones who create good, and therefore also evil? I know all of this is far-fetched, but you just can't ignore the fact that the world would be a better place if we all just got along a little bit better. Makes interesting conversation, maybe content for a good book.... maybe. It's not a very original idea, either. And, it's cool to stretch your mind and think about, too.

The next "But What If" will be about "knocking hump day into the next week".

What if we've been given control over whether or not tomorrow comes, and we just don't know it? If everyone, collectively, suddenly stopped setting goals, making progress and improving ourselves and the world, would we be given another chance or would it all come to an end?