This past summer, I was given the amazing opportunity to do a 2-week long internship in India. Since this was a once in a lifetime sort of thing, my grandma and mom tagged along as well, 2 weeks prior. So, we were able to travel for a month and chose to check out Beijing, China and do some touristy things such as seeing the Taj Mahal and going to an elephant farm in Jaipur. Little did I know how blessed I was until I got off of the plane when we landed in New Delhi, India.

As Americans, most of us don’t understand the gravity behind being malnourished and living on the streets along with hundreds of other people. You always see the commercials showing the starving kids in Africa, but most times you don’t think anything other than “Awe, that poor child. How sad.” In fact, a lot of us (me being guilty as charged” won’t donate either.

Why?

Let me break this down for you. For example, you don’t know how it feels to have a broken leg if you haven’t actually broken your own leg. You just know that it hurts, but you don’t understand how bad it hurts.

We see and hear about these people on television and truly can’t grasp how horrific their conditions are. We don’t know all of the factors because we haven’t even been close to *insert third world country*.

It becomes real when you are actually seeing the conditions with your own two eyes. The disease, the filth, the amount of people living on the streets or in little shacks that barely even pass for shacks.

As if the tiny hotel room you have to stay in during your stay in that country wasn’t bad enough.

I kid you not, I had the biggest mental breakdown when my makeup fell into our toilet because I didn’t have enough counter space and the toilet was just too close to the end of the counter.

That all changed when I woke up the next day and took a taxi to the Taj Mahal. It was 4 in the morning and the streets were literally filled with homeless people. They only had a blanket to lay down on the ground to sleep on and were back to back. There were HUNDREDS of them. This is something that’s common there, though. They are malnourished to the point where you can see their bones.

The worst is when three year olds come up to your car and beg for money. You give it to them because they didn’t ask for this. There was nothing they could’ve done to have prevented being this unfortunate. These people are poor because of their last names. They were born into poverty.

Suddenly your whole life changes. You are grateful for everything you have and everyone you have.

Everyone needs this experience to actually understand how blessed we are. Especially my sheltered generation.

Life is so much bigger than our own bubbles. We have so much to live and be grateful for despite our own situations. We live in a country full of “First world probs” and don’t even stop to think about what that means.

So, long story short, you should visit a third world country. It will have the biggest positive impact on your life.