Overcoming obstacles

Food

We as human beings used to eat everything. Sharks, octopuses, crabs, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs and the most varied kind of vegetables, mushrooms and insects are part of the menu. Even humans had been eaten as the people in Los Andes did because of an air accident in 1972.


As well, we don’t care to pay big amounts of money for a meal. It’s only a matter of status. For example, in China some people are able to pay more than $100 for a shark fin soup to show others their position in society, not for hunger! However, UN had reported that one billion people are hungry in the world and warned about the increment in food rate in the last two years has been around 28%. Then, we can ask ourselves: when we go out for dinner are we going to eat for hunger or just for looking as important people who can afford to pay sometimes for food that in some cases we don’t eat?

"Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper."
Adelle Davis

Education

It´s not a secret that in Costa Rican education is bad, principally, primary and high school. Generally, children and teenagers don´t have sources to improve. Desks, buildings and their own poverty make studying hard. Always, they have to pay a rate at the beginning of the course although the government says that education in Costa Rica is free. In addition, it´s very common that parents keep giving money throughout the year to satisfy other needs like materials for plastic arts and that kind of stuff which is in some cases unnecessary. On the other hand, higher education is good and cheap, but ironically it´s not allowed for poor people but for those who had received a good education, which is commonly given in private schools.

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

Mark Twain

Donation

Most people talk about giving to others. Such thing is good, but sometimes those people are healthy and destitute who aren’t able to improve their lives themselves because of our charity. What I’m saying is not a matter to take them aside, but aim our donations to people whom really don’t have anything. Elderly or children, even those who take care of animals for example, they also need money. Say no more to a Teletón, which money is misused by corrupt people. Two years ago, they used some of the Teletón money to build a parking lot under roof, for the CCSS´s "doctors"!

“When we grow old, there can only be one regret - not to have given enough of ourselves.”

Eleonora Duse

Longevity

To be elderly is not about to reach a hundred years old, but the way in which we have lived all those years. It is about feeling proud of ourselves when we were looking back and see what we had done with our children and what they have done with theirs.
To be elderly is not only a matter of being interviewed for the local news reporter because of our age, but because of what we can teach others so that they can be as good as us, feeling proud when they become elderly people, too.

“Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.”

Wendell Holmes