Ever since I donated money to Worldvision last year, as a Christmas donation in lieu of others, they've been sending me appeals for donations every now and then. Every time I see it, it invariably creates a huge feeling of guilt in me.

Here I sit, in my room with my fan blowing, Inara singing and typing away on my laptop. What have I done to deserve all of this? While this form of questioning is certainly not new to me (indeed playing Real Lives and the huge number of times I was 'born' in Africa and inflicted with a number of diseases even before I entered school, that is IF I even entered school, brought up the issue in my mind) never is it so acute as when one of those mass mail letters come by. Was I sent here for a purpose, or was it merely luck that I ended up being born to the set of parents that I have now, in such conditions?

Anyway as you can guess this post was inspired when I came back and yet another letter was waiting in the letter basket, which of course I opened. This leads me to another thought, why do I give money to them? Is it because I truly want to help, or is it because I feel guilty that I was accorded such opportunities while their lives might even end before it truly began, or even worse, is it because I want to use it to show to other people how altruistic I am? (as one article argued recently). I don't I can even quite begin to answer that, or even truly want to know the answer as it might ruin my idea of myself as a person and so the question lies there, hanging ominously and unanswered.

Why do we do the things we do? (And perhaps I have found my idea for my TOK presentation!)