Help Out the Less Fortunate this Holiday Season

By: Kali Lamparelli
Posted In: Opinion

I’m two hours early for work again. Instead of working on my PowerPoints and various papers, I decided to pick up People. I had to find out about Tom and Katie’s marriage in Italy because this is vital to my life. At the end of the magazine, I found an intriguing article about a man who watched a show in 1986 that moved him. He began to cry when he saw a woman could not afford the medical bills for her children. He thought to himself what I do in this world does not matter. He opened up a medical practice and decided to make it his life’s mission to help those who could not afford health care.

I’m lucky; I take my amoxicillin for my strep with the Vitamin Water that went warm on my desk. This amazing and oh so special Vitamin Water makes me wonder why my consumer driven culture has me drinking the best version of something so basic.

It’s the holiday season, the local CVS asks, and “will you buy mints for the nursing homes?” The local supermarket asks another question. The Salvation Army is getting ready to ring their bells. Africa needs support and the children at the shelter a couple towns over are asking for canned goods to compliment Thanksgiving or Christmas baskets. Schools and churches have Christmas trees set up asking for clothes or toys for this girl or that boy.

Why are we so willing to go out and buy our beer for Thursday night and peoples ‘normal’weekend I’m hung over coffees? If we have the spare change for all of this why can’t we buy stuffing for the local food pantry? Why can’t we sort through old clothes and donate some? Better yet why can’t we give up the money for our next designer such and such and give it to the Salvation Army ringing their bells or to the cause in Africa?

I am not saying that I am a saint or that every time someone is ringing a bell I am

conditioned to drop my extra change where a person needs help. If my coffee money can give someone medicine for six months or socks for a year then I can go without my usual caffeine. If they can go without socks, food and medicine for lengthy periods of time I can go without caffeine for one morning, can’t I? Absolutely.

I realize we are in a world and in a time period where education costs an obscene amount of money and that in all honesty, we may not have the two pennies at the time of the bell. I realize that we may not even have enough money at times to fund our own food for the week or pay our cell phone bills. Fitting in is tough, so instead of realizing that your weekend beer won’t make you any more accepted, maybe the beer money could, just this once, go for someone’s socks or food.

Maybe instead of buying the next great book of poems or going out to dinner, we could

sacrifice that money and make someone else’s time worthwhile.

I am asking that maybe this week, month, holiday, and year that just once you stop and give the last 50 cents in your wallet or purse to something that can move the world to goodness.

Please remember that where you may be in the world today may not last and that one day you may need someone’s 50 cents just as much as they needed yours.