Did you know that there are approximately 48 million people who are significantly malnourished in the United States? Aside from the fact that 13 million of those people are children, this is a ridiculously high number. It’s interesting how in the land of the free the food isn’t. To lock a staple of life behind a pay wall is quite frankly ridiculous, and something that should not be a common occurrence whatsoever.

A full stomach is perhaps one of the most valuable things a human can have, but when was the last time you heard a person living in poverty griping about being too full? How we’ve let people be able to fall to this is past me. Soup kitchens are great for helping people out but soup can only repair so much. For most who live in this state, food is just one of the many challenges if you can believe it. Shelter, water, clothes, hell, even something like a nice shower are just a fraction of the things many people lack in their lives. It shouldn’t be possible for this to happen, and anyone who thinks otherwise is dead wrong. Once again, these are not material things, I’m not asking for free vacations, or sneakers, or anything of the sort, we’re talking about the things that keep us alive.

I have a story for you, a story that is the reason I’m sitting here and talking about such a topic. Sometime about two years ago I went with my family to my church’s food drive, and for about an hour or two I just sat there, and watched people come by. What shocked me most was the amount of people that were there, I mean, there was no way that many people were in the area, because there wasn’t. Some people had come from miles away just to get a hot meal, this shocked me like nothing else I’d seen. And so, for an hour or two, or however long I may have been there, I gave people food. It felt great, like I was doing something that was just, “right” I guess. It got me thinking however, “why am I the one doing this?” out of every person in the world, some random unimportant kid was the one that had to do this. Obviously, it wasn't just me, but why was I even there in the first place. If it’s the right thing to do then everyone should be doing it, no? There are so many people out there who can help and yet the one doing it is a small little church in Glendale.

My point is, we need to prioritize different things in the world, nice houses and luxury cars are great, sure, a trip to the Bahamas even. But when your need for leisure somehow outweighs someone's need for survival, an eyebrow starts to get raised. If every human in the world got just what they needed, we’d all be fed and satiated. I’m not saying you can’t have anything nice in life, I just simply mean that excessive greed is useless and only results in the slight betterment of one's life, it isn’t a crucial determining factor. So please, know that at the end of the day food is something that should be ubiquitous, not something that the luckiest bit of society can have.