How lucky are you?

Do you ever think about how lucky you are? I do, not a lot, but every few years I think about how lucky I am to be placed where I've been placed, simply from an accident of birth. I've been thinking about that today.

I found a grid of global population by age and sex, about 268,000 people alive today were born the same day I was. Probably 300,000 people where born the day I was born (taking into account mortality rates). I had originally calculated the percentage of people in North America and earning a middle class income or better giving me a 2.5% chance of being born as fortunately as I was, but it would be higher than that as there are lots of other wealthy countries I could have been born into. Still, I'm pretty fortunate. I believe I have a responsibility to humanity to help others because I can, but what to do? There are so many choices. I think some of the first things I need to choose though are to look to the needs of others before my own comforts, do I really need that piece of pie? Could not the $2-3 it costs be put to better use? What about that new item? Do I really need more clutter in my life? More things?

In other news, I got a haircut and highlights, can I just say something meekly? That although it was more than I intended to spend...I feel pretty, so it was worth every penny.