People who rummage through rubbish bins.

Hey all,

Just about a week ago on the street, I saw an elderly woman rummaging through my trash/recyclables for soda cans she could salvage and make money off of. I didn't know this happened in my neighborhood. As I backed out of my garage, I noticed through my mirror that she was smiling and waving to me... I waved back. My heart went out to her.

When I got home from work, I asked my parents if they'd seen her. My dad said he'd seen her several times. This wasn't the first time.

Hello, people, it exists! We don't normally think about it. I think a lot of people think I overdo the whole "let's stop illiteracy" thing, but how can one overdo that? Some people say I work too hard; others think my dreams are too big. Some people think I'm arrogant because I'm always preaching about Wish. At least I'm making the effort. I personally think that I can never do enough. Everything I do in my entire lifetime will never be enough.

Why is it so hard to convince people to do a good thing? Why is it so hard to get a few cents from someone who never uses those pennies anyway?

Everyone has their own dreams. Everyone has their own priorities, but why is it so hard to ask for a small amount of someone's time? We spend nearly a third of our lives sleeping... If we managed to decrease that third by a few hours, what would we lose? A question on a midterm? A percent on an essay? An hour's worth of pay even...

We're constantly running. We never get a break in life... And when we do, we look for other ways to occupy our spare time. But isn't it too late by that time? Yeah, we have more money by then... and many of us even have social statuses, but our best years are our college years. The world is our backyard. We have a plethora of resources and the forever-giving ability to take these resources to those who need them most.

I guess we're all people who rummage through rubbish bins. We look for petty things in a pile of trash. Those things do add up... But if you take away one or two cans, it wouldn't make a difference. We feed off our dreams and time. We spend so much time making our dreams our reality that we forget to see the dreams of others.

I request you to do this: the next time you're given a chance to make a difference, take it. If you have a midterm the next day, plan around it. If it takes up a few hours, do it anyway.

After all, we all rummage through rubbish bins of memories when we're older. It'd be nice to find a few collectibles in the trash, the worthwhile memories we make while we were running to catch up with our lives.

Sincerely,
Naina Singh