When a kid in Nigeria with the scraps of his brother’s hand me downs on his back does not sell the very last cassava seeds from his family’s garden, he thinks of the empty dinner table haunting him when he gets home. When a girl in Cambodia walks on the streets, she worries that a pimp could suddenly trap her in a life of prostitution and abuse. In Afghanistan, kids worry that a bomb shell could end their lives at any given moment.

 That is very different from our problems; glitchy iOS 7 programming, choosing between The Burger Joint and Five Guys, and anxiety for Friday night’s football game. It is a shame, I believe, that we are so caught up in our little perfect worlds that we never take the time to look around the world and see what is truly going on; to see what the root of these heinous problems are Why is it that I get to go home to a hot meal and a cozy bed every night? Why do I get the privilege of a large military willing to give their lives to protect my rights? Why do I get all of these luxuries that most children around the world can only dream of and why, in this age and time, is this still a problem?

 In my mind the answer is because we are just ignorant and sucked into a world of fantasies. Instead of mourning the rising toll of Syrian deaths, we cry over our favorite celebrity dying of drug overdose. Instead of paying attention to the news and learning about why we are sending troops and taxpayer money away to war, our eyes are glued on 4.5 x 2.31 inch iPhone screens, updating twitter and instagram.

 Whether we know it or not, we are the most privileged in the world. Freshly cut grass every week, promethean boards in every classroom, and North Faces on the backs of every teenager; that is Loudoun County for you. The richest county in America with one of the best school systems in the world, right on the outskirts of the most powerful nation’s capital, Washington D.C.

 It is funny to think of our lives this way, isn’t it?

 We are not trapped in the middle of a war, we do not fear for our lives when walking in a neighborhood, and, thank God, most of us have dinner on our table every night.

 So, instead of complaining that traffic on route 7 sucks or that we have absolutely nothing to do on a Saturday night, lets take a breather and be thankful for what we have; lets take advantage of the opportunities lying at our front door, and do everything in our power to help our brothers and sisters around the world who do about anything to live our very boring lives.