I’m Starving To Death!

How many times have your uttered a phrase indicating that you are hungry? “I am starving to death”, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse”, “I am famished”. When was the last time you were really hungry? When was the last time you went 2r4 hours without a meal. When was the last time you went to bed hungry? Have you ever wondered when you go to bed at night that you might literally starve to death and never wake up?

Probably no one reading this article has ever experienced the suffering brought on by true starvation. Missing lunch yesterday doesn’t count. Being unable to stand because you are too weak due to lack of nourishment does count. Being to weak to lift your head from your bed does count. Being able to think of anything but food and surviving without food does count. I worry when the peanut butter jar get low. I wonder what it is like to wonder if you will ever eat again.

Now I am not trying to come off like Sally Struthers here, but I cannot help but wonder how a nation that has starving children thinks it makes good sense to put food in our gas tanks. It is not like we need to put corn in gas. There is plenty of fossil fuel that can be harvested right here in the good old U S of A. What is that you say? We cannot do that, that may destroy the ecology of some land and some flora or fauna may become extinct. Look at a dead bird and look at a starving child. Which tugs at your heartstrings more? Which is more important?

What can we do about? We can give up somethings that will go a long way to feed a starving child. Give up a 12 pack of beer, and you can provide over 110 meals to a starving child. Give up one pack of ccigarettes and provide 55 meals to a starving child. Do you really need that candy bar? That second helping of potatoes? That trip to the spa? What would happen if every middle class American donated one dollar a day to feed starving children?

I have heard the way to break the cycle of poverty is through education. Imagine how difficult it must be to sit in school and being unable to concentrate because of the hunger pains. Imagine sitting in health class and being lectured on the nutritional value of the various food groups, but you haven’t eaten in a day and a half. It is almost torture.

I realize that the idea of every middle class American giving something up to feed hungry children is Utopian. I realize the liberals in Washington will not authorize drilling in protected lands or off shore, even if millions of pounds of corn could go to feed starving children. But we have to start somewhere. What if the IRS changed that block on the top of the 1040 to permit you to donate $1.00 to feed starving children than to donate to the presidential campaign? Would you do that? Next Lent when you give up candy or pop or some other not necessity, consider calculating the cost and donate that money to a charity that will feed hungry children. It has to start somewhere, why not with you and me?

“So it is written so shall it be”