Evening Thoughts

   I've been thinkig a lot lately, about many things. I've felt a bit powerless, because there are so many things that needs to change, that I can't really do anything about. These issues are too big for just one person to handle.
   I have never experience racism, the closest things is being called derogatory terms because I am either a woman, or because I'm a swedish speaking person living in Finland, neither can really be compared, and so I will never understand the struggles of being on the recieving end of racist bigotry. But some things I read or see on the Internet makes my stomach turn. People of color can't walk into stores in America without having the cashier keeping an eye on them, in case they steal something. POC can fear for their lives after watching someone sharing their skin tone being shot dead on TV, after doing absolutely nothing wrong. POC walking in the streets are being accused of loitering, or even staking out houses, just because they're there at the time. Colleges in America accept POC because of their etnicity, to fill a quota. POC are less likely to be hired due to racism. And I can't do anything about it. I'm just one person, living on the other side of the globe, I'm a small, white girl thousands of miles away who's watching the shit show that is the US and wishes with all her heart she could do something about it.
   There are wars fought on other countries land, started by nations that had nothing to do with the conflict, or involving countries having nothing to do with said conflict that now has entered the war without any kind of reasoning. The poor individuals living in said countries are now starving, getting caught and killed in the crossfire, dying during trying to escape their war ridden country. And I can't do anything about that either, because I'm just one person, far away, watching the world falling apart and people suffering because of it.
   We are overworking our planet and soon enough, it's not going to be able to sustain us. We're already using too many resources. We're killing off entire species, and we're ruining entire ecosystems, faster than any other environmental changes at any other point in the evolution of our planet. And despite me trying to use less electricity, despite me trying to shop less than I have in years before, eat less things that are bad for the environment to eat, I'm not making much of an impact, because I am one person in almost 8 billion people.
   Starvation, racism, sexism, poverty, children not being able to read or go to school, people getting cast out of their societies, people dying from preventable causes such as diseases easily treated if they had the means to do it, people not having clean drinking water, the pressures the human race places on our planet, animal cruelty... So many things that I can't do anything to help. So many disasters that I can't prevent, so many issues that I can't help.
   I'm just one person, but lately I've been feeling bad because I can't do anything about the things I keep reading about, seeing every day. I feel like I should do more, but I can never figure out how. I should make more of an effort to make an impact on the world, a positive change that will change people's lives, where the world changes for the better.
   But I'm not able to do that. I'm a small blogger with a globally speaking microscopic platform, so even if I told all of you to make an impact, even that wouldn't make that much of a change. I don't know what to do, how am I suppose to just go on with my life and not think about these things? How am I supposed to eat, sleep, laugh, knowing that we're killing our planet and that people are suffering and dying over things that really don't matter, things like power.
   I can't change anything, and it makes me feel crappy.
   I'm feeling better and happier about myself, making me able to focus on other things, like impacting other people's lives positively. I want to do something that makes other people happy, now that I myself am a lot happier. I have always believed that you have to fix yourself before you help other people, because otherwise you won't be able to make that help the best it can be if you're feeling crappy yourself.
   I'm going to find a way to figure out something that I can do, more than I'm doing right now. I need some time to figure out something. I need something that will make other people than myself happy, I want to make a positive impact, and I think you should consider doing something positive for the world as well, even if it's something as small as buying less clothing to make the impact on our planet smaller, donating to good causes to make people's suffering around the globe less horrifying.
   This turned into a really long evening post about my thoughts and feelings, but bottom line: make positive impacts, people. Even if it's just something small, not every gesture has to be grand, because kindness often takes shape in the smallest of things. Eat less cheese, take the bus to work, donate to Unicef, do something that makes this planet a little bit better to live on, for all of us.
   Because I may be just one person, but so are you. So are all of you, reading this. And many small, positive impacts will make a grand gesture, we'll just have to put in a little bit of work for it to happen.