Carnegie Mellon University

The Power of Using Less And Giving More


Essa Almuhannadi
Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar
Modern Languages - Understanting Cultural Complexities

I remember learning that the price of an action or a product is determined by its alternatives. After learning that, I started thinking about the many things that I bought but never used or didn’t need. For example, a glass bottle costs 5 Qatari riyals while a plastic bottle costs 1 riyal even though they provide the same amount of water. Now if I recycle the plastic bottle, I would have no need of a glass bottle and would easily use that 4 Qatari riyals for anything else. I know that you think that this make no difference and you would consider me greedy as that is the first thing we say about people who save up money, but what if I told you that those 4 riyals can make a difference in the world.

How does 4 riyals make a difference?

According to the united nations world food programme, it takes only 0.5 US dollars to feed a child for a day which when converted into Qatari Riyals is about 2 Riyals. So that means that these 4 Riyals could feed two children for a day. And now if we go back would you still buy that glass bottle of water? Obviously, we don’t think about these little things and as Benjamin Franklin said “beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship”. As such we should widen our horizon and think about the many people that are suffering in this world and what we could do to help them prosper and live a happy life.

How do you help other people and become more selfless?

As humans we tend to become more happier when we help other human beings as it’s in our genetics. However, some people still think that buying material possessions make them happy and they’re right they do make us happy. But these material possessions only bring temporary happiness as we get used to them. For example, a new car makes us happy for only a couple of weeks and then we just get used to it as we use it every day. On the other hand, by helping another human being we become much happier as our happiness is not related to a material possession but by the living conditions of another human being. for example, by helping build a school in a poor neighborhood we provide hundreds of children with the opportunity to prosper and through that many of those children will eventually grow up to become active parts of society and help other people in need too.

For anyone interested in helping end global hunger please download the ShareTheMeal App. Finally, this piece of writing could be summarized through the following statement: Save as much as possible and give as much as possible.