A Story Never Written

All right, so the title isn't particularly accurate. Clearly I did write the following, otherwise I wouldn't be able to post it. A better title would be "a story never posted," but I'm posting it now so that isn't true either.
Anyway. I wrote this with the intention of posting it in pieces on Facebook, but for some reason I don't think I ever finished. I found it on my iPod today and thought it was worth posting - partially because I found it convicting, even though I wrote it, and mostly because I have nothing else to post at present. But don't despair! That will change shortly!
In the meantime, without further ado...

We are the privileged.
But we don't understand it.
We compare ourselves to the wrong people.
We look at what we don't have rather than what we do have.
Maybe we don't have the new iPad, but we have clean water constantly, readily available.
Maybe we don't have the latest and greatest smart phone, but we have shoes. More than one pair, in fact.
Maybe we don't have the nicest car, or the most expensive clothes, or the fanciest computers, but we have roofs over our heads and food on our tables, three times a day.
We have everything we need and a good deal of what we want.
And still we don't understand.
There are children dying of malnourishment, disease, and neglect (among various other reasons) in dozens if not hundreds of countries around the world and we think life isn't fair because we can't get exactly what we want when we want it.
We live in an age where we can reach thousands of people with the touch of a button.
We speak the language of technology in its various dialects - phones, computers, video game systems, mp3 players, stereos, etc. - but so few of us fail to take advantage of what we have been given.
Not only do we not understand gratitude, we don't understand the impact we could have on the world and the change we could bring about. We have an opportunity staring us in the face and we are blind to it.
If we could join our voices together and fight for a common cause, we would create a roar so loud that it would resonate in every corner of the globe.
A common cause, a single goal. No matter what it is, we could accomplish it with very little effort, if only we would wake up and understand.
But we don't, because we don't understand who we are. We are the privileged, and we prefer to live our comfortable lives in oblivion.