Numbers. We seem to be mesmerized by them in today’s society. The larger, the better. Or at least this seems to be the general trend. We rarely like or even pay attention to small numbers… we love them primarily when they hang on the price tag. But most of the time they are unimportant.
Granted, in certain areas of life a number might be directly related to the importance of the issue at hand, but this shouldn’t be the rule of thumb because the reality is different. Each one is significant.
This small thought was provoked by a brief youtube ad ( one of those that show before the video plays). A female voice speaks of the fact that every 3 seconds a girl is forced into marriage. It’s a campaign by Plan Nederland (in Dutch only, sorry).
It’s not the campaign itself or the video (as relevant and as good as they are) that made me pause for a moment. It was the emphasis on the numbers.
My very first thought was – would I be hearing about this if there were only one girl forced into marriage… or only one child dying from hunger and poverty… or only one person affected by the overwhelming waves of the tsunami?