The Moments In Between

Little Kavita Laghari was born in Shanivarasanthe, India in 1941 — the first child born in the village that year. Her mother came from a royal bloodline that was ousted by Ahmad Yar Khan when he took over the rule of Baluchistan (now in Pakistan) in 1933. They sold what they could and used the money to get as far away as possible, even though travel under British rule was difficult. Their money was nearly exhausted when they arrived in Shanivarasanthe in the Southern Indian district of Kodagu, Karnataka.

Being royalty was the only skill Kavita’s parents had. They spent their last bit of money purchasing a small cardamom farm. They learned to be farmers, but only managed to eke out a meager existence.

When Kavita was 9 years old, her father was killed in an accident on the farm. Her mother had always worked with her father, but now Kavita was forced to drop out of school to work for food.

Her mother died from pneumonia two years later.

Statistically, the odds for Kavita were never great. At that time and in that place, there were very few educational opportunities at all and even fewer available for women.

Kavita never owned much. She lived in a small community house with several friends. They never had a television. The only entertainment they had was a small radio and the games and fun they made for themselves.

Kavita died in 1983–42 years old, and 6 years below the average life expectancy for the region at that time. She was the only child of her parents, and she had never married.

Kavita was extremely poor her entire life. In spite of all her suffering, she lived happily. Her closest friends were by her bed when she died of untreated ovarian cancer. Peace replaced pain when her life slipped away; finally finding relief.

But, she left no legacy; only a few villagers she knew attended to her at her burial. Within a few months of her passing, she was largely forgotten as her neighbors continued their own struggle for survival.

Kavita’s story is fiction, but it could easily be true and is a version of what life was really like in rural India in the 1940s.

In February 2021, the world’s population is estimated at around 7.85 billion people. It was not quite 10 years ago that the population reached 7 billion.

In statistical terms, individuals aren’t accounted for because they disappear as rounding errors. 1 person represents just 0.00000001272% (yeah, that’s 7 zeros) of the total population. Statistically insignificant.

In the first 43 days of 2021, it is estimated that more than 16.6 million babies have been born. Almost 7 million people have died, some of them the babies that were just born. If you do the math, the population growth for 2021 hovers around 80,000 people per day born onto this Blue Marble in space.

Half a world away and more than 70 years removed from the 1940s, my wife and I sat in our favorite South Asian restaurant last night. (The Himalayan Kitchen — owned and operated by a Nepalese family — if you want to know.) We enjoyed what was perhaps the best meal I’ve ever had there: Lamb Boti Kabab, Chicken Coconut Curry, and Butter Chicken (which I think is their signature dish). Kavita might well represent the family that started the Himalayan Kitchen if she had just a few more opportunities in life.

According to WorldVision.org, about 1.9 billion people live in extreme poverty (about 36% of the total population). In terms of US dollars, those are people who subsist on less than $1.25 per day. In the US, you can’t even buy a full-size candy bar for that anymore unless you want to buy 40 of them at Costco or Sam’s Club.

When you have sufficient for your needs but have the heart to help, it can be tragically disheartening to see the extreme poverty in the world — the unfathomable amount of human suffering that occurs every minute of every hour of every day across the globe.

At a moment during dinner, our thoughts turned to people like our imaginary Kavita. How do two people like us make a difference in the life of someone like her?

There are 525,600 minutes in a year; 42,048,000 in 80 years; roughly the average life expectancy in the US today. According to one Nielsen report, people in the United States spend an average of 4 hours per day watching TV. That’s 240 minutes. Over an 80-year lifetime, that’s a staggering 7,008,000 minutes! Assuming an average of 420 minutes of sleep per night, the average person is awake for 29,784,000 minutes in their lifetime. Those numbers are so big they actually lose meaning for most people (unless you’re talking about money in which case many people’s eyes grow wide.) In percentages, that’s roughly 24% of the average person’s life wasted in front of a mind-numbing box; about 15 minutes of every waking hour of every day in the average person’s life.

I’m not a TV watcher — I generally watch fewer than 30 minutes a day. I’m even getting better at curtailing the amount of time I spend on social media to under 15 minutes per day. But, I have my own ways of wasting time (Sudoku, anyone?)

A favorite quote of mine crosses my mind at dinner last night:

The worth of souls is great in the sight of God.

I got up today and sat in the basement of my home finishing an episode of a TV show I started yesterday. Then, I ran on my treadmill for an hour while I watched another episode and a half. Then, I sat on the floor and finished the episode. In all, about 90 minutes.

Throughout the morning, that thought about the worth of souls has really stuck with me. The conversation my wife and I had last night was, again, about how two people who care about others can make a difference when there are so many people in need of help right now.

The answer is surprisingly simple: service.

Imagine for a moment taking just 60 minutes each day to lift someone else. Over a lifetime, that’s 1,752,000 minutes spent doing something for someone else. 30 minutes a day still approaches 1 million minutes doing something for someone else.

What if it was 90 minutes? 120 minutes? If you work full-time and care for your own family, spending 120 minutes every day serving people outside your family may be tricky unless you happen to be in the umbrella of people who still manage to watch 240 minutes of TV every day.

I’ve recently taken up reaching out to just one person each day that I feel prompted to reach out to. It’s a practice that has changed my life. It has brought me closer to my wife and my children. It has given me a greater perspective into what people around me are dealing with. Those experiences have increased my love for those people, some of whom are people I barely know.

Give it some thought. What would it mean to someone if you took some time today to do something nice for them: a phone call, a text message, an email, a social media message, a small financial contribution to a verified charity, whatever? It doesn’t have to take a long time. It doesn’t have to cost much. If it’s sincere and heartfelt, it’ll make a difference for you and for them.

Take a hard look at how you’re using your moments. They may number in the millions in the average life, but they are fleeting. Make sure you spare some of them to do something good for someone else. You won’t regret it. If everyone did just that, the world would be a vastly different place than it is today; just one moment and one person at a time.

Thanks for reading. I’m going to call my brother now.