there are days, about once every few weeks, where i consider how lucky i am to be living in the western world with an immense amount of personal and property safety.

i don’t fear recklessness on the roads. i don’t fear being robbed on the subway at night. i don’t fear walking on night streets of toronto, or running for 10km by myself through empty north york streets. i trust the water in my tap is drinkable – and i trust that it is effectively limitless. i can be warm when i want to be, and i can choose how to dress based on my own desires and not ones imposed onto me by a government. i’m not scared of public diseases on the subway.

all of these thoughts have actively went through my head in the last few months – appropo nothing, really. just a daily gratitude for .. being insanely lucky and privileged by the virtue of being born to the right people.

hell, i feel so safe that i’m cool with random people staying in my apartment for money.

and naturally a lot of these thoughts are raised when i read of any news in the world, and then i stumble onto sentences like this:

Russia is classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank (having a per capita GDP exceeding $14,000). 

14k per person, that’s … such a low bar. and i know it’s not income, but i mean, trinidad is doing better than russia.

clearly money isn’t a clear causation of safety, but inarguably there is a correlation there and … we’re all just really lucky, that’s all i guess i am thinking. forget lotteries, we already won compared to the other 6-7 billion.