Perspective

Fourteen million. It's funny how small it seems.

I know; that's funny, right? But when you think about fourteen million dollars in the context of today's multi-millionaires and billionaires (who are always in the news in this election cycle), it seems like a paltry amount. How can I really achieve anything with just ("just") fourteen million dollars?

I, of course, always talk about personal luxury items and giving money away to family and friends. For instance, I always want to help out my brother's family by buying them a truck or a family car of some sort. I think I'd pay for repairs to their house, so it wouldn't flood as much during heavy rains. I'd pay for "experience" type things for their kids - athletics clubs, skiing, school trips, instruments.

But what about everyone else? What about achieving real change in people's lives, in society?

Well, one thing I've always dreamed of doing would be going around my neighborhood and asking people if they wanted to fix up their houses and offering to pay for it. A lot my neighbors are working class (although it's slowly being gentrified) and have probably lived in their houses for ten plus years.

Eh, that one's kind of tricky. Here's another one:

Computer training (and skills training) for all the kids and young adults in the neighborhood. Give them all the opportunity to compete against anyone else for those jobs out there. I could stand to learn Microsoft Access; let's teach all the kids that and make them database experts; seems like everyone's using a database these days. (That reminds me of a housemate I used to have who was 21 and a friend of his had moved to Hawaii and was making 80 grand or so a year doing database work for a company there - with no college degree.)

I'd like to offer people the opportunity of travel: pay for all the kids in the neighborhood to go to the Grand Canyon; send them all to the Great Lakes or the Grand Tetons. Have them experience something that is so different from their day-to-day surroundings that it opens up their eyes to the possibilities they have. (That might even be a great thing for the adults as well.)

Or maybe I could do smaller things: low-cost business loans to start-ups in the area. Artistic grants to city-based artists. (Buying public space to display their art.)(In fact, that would be a cool idea: calling for submissions for art to be displayed on billboards and then buying ten billboards around the city and just having photographs or paintings displayed on them in huge size. That would be cool.)

Buying empty lots in the city to have them converted to public gardens. Paying people to plant and maintain them. Hiring someone to create sports teams at public housing complexes and organize sporting events to boost morale and create structure. Hiring someone to teach cooking classes in public housing complexes - or just to cook healthy meals to let people see that "healthy" can equal "tasty" and "yummy." Paying for kids from public housing to go to special camps that fit their abilities or talents - maybe even out of state, overnight camps, camps like I went to as a kid. Creating a ski club/team for lower-income kids; taking them to mountains and teaching them how to ski and letting them try themselves out in a different environment. Taking kids water-skiing and giving them scuba classes, letting them learn things they might never have experienced otherwise. Giving them entre into another world and letting them see they can be a part of it.

I want people to be different than I am; hopeful instead of pessimistic, reaching instead of shrinking. I want them to do all the things I didn't do because I was afraid and maybe I'll be able to feed off of their courage and energy and do something great myself.