Taking stock of our blessings

Sometimes, I just don't get it. I simply do not see what I have, and what others don't have. In the midst of mounting deadlines for papers and exams, the strain of extracurricular activities, and the youthful ponderings of my life's problems, I lose sight of the bigger picture: I am one of the luckiest people on this Earth. If we think of good fortune, perhaps Bill Gates will come to mind, or even Joe Millionaire (Evan Mariott). We'll mention athletes like LeBron James, blessed with athletic prowess, or actresses such as Julia Roberts, born with remarkable beauty. True, I do not have the talent of James, the wealth of Gates, the beauty of Roberts, or the brains of Joe Millionaire but I still feel as though I've already won the lottery of life, and am blessed regardless.

Why am I so fortunate? I was born in Vancouver, Canada to two loving parents in an environment where I was able to flourish as a student. I was subsequently given the opportunity to attend Princeton University. Of course this does not describe the complex story of my life, but it is a basic summary. I've also had my share of problems, but nothing insurmountable. On the face of it, this story — shared by many at this school — seems rather unremarkable, but it is not.

All of us should consider ourselves extremely fortunate to live in the conditions that we do both as students at Princeton University, and as citizens of the West. We often lose sight of what we already have, and instead focus on what is missing from our lives. I cannot even imagine the despair and difficulty that others endure in their lives in many places all over this world. As students, we attend one of the finest institutions in the world, where we are surrounded by an unparalleled wealth of academic resources, and opportunities to become the most powerful, and wealthy citizens of this planet.

Beyond Princeton, as residents of the West or the industrialized world, we have been given the opportunity to live in conditions envied by billions. We take for granted the access we have to a technological revolution that has yet to absorb dozens of countries, but enables us to live so prosperously. We dream of careers that take us to the heights of Manhattan, where we could earn six-figure salaries, perhaps even in our first year. At the same time, 1.174 billion people live on less than $1 per day, and 2.812 billion human beings live on less than $2 per day. That amounts to half the people we share our existence with. Do I even understand what I have?

While we sometimes have difficulty going to class because of the snow, at least we do not have to worry about flying bullets. The dedication to go to school, to learn, in the midst of a war and great despair is something that we have no familiarity with; however, elsewhere in the world, there are students who do brave those though conditions to attend university. A second-year business student at Birzeit University (West Bank) describes his tribulations as such: "Our courses start earlier in the day in order that we can get home through the checkpoint before closure. We might have to stand for one hour in the queue and then the soldiers may let us pass through or they may not, in which case we go back home. Sometimes the checkpoints are closed and we go through the mountains, facing tear gas and sound bombs. We do this walk carrying heavy books. Sometimes we get there but our teacher doesn't."

It would take me a thousand pages to describe what most Princeton students are privy to that millions around the world can only envy. They are things as lavish as banquets at Prospect House, to things as simple as basic sanitation, and as rudimentary as owning shoes. We have been bestowed with a path in life that has afforded us success and prosperity, but I hope that none of us think that this success is for us only. When we do break away from our Princeton bubble, I hope we will use our success and abilities to show the rest of the world that what is ours is theirs. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take anything that I do not need for my own immediate use, and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else . . . Nature produces enough for our wants from day to day, and if only everybody took enough for himself and nothing more, there would be no pauperism in this world, there would be no man dying of starvation in this world. But so long as we have got this inequality, so long we are thieving."

Taufiq Rahim is a Wilson School major from Vancouver, British Columbia.