Live Below The Line: eve

When I was eleven I signed up to do the forty hour famine. These were in the days before you could simply make donations online and had social media to help you. In my primary school years I struggled with weight and self image. I would be the last person to consider giving up food - and it's not like these days where you just give up Facebook or technology or chocolate - back then you gave up food and nobody asked questions about it.

I remember planting myself out in front of my Mum's workplace on a brown bench held together by two yellow concrete slabs in the shape of 'lions', decorated with home made signs about sponsoring me to do the forty hour famine. People would come and ask me what it was all about and I would tell them what I was doing. Even as a fat eleven year old with an addiction to junk food I knew that there were people less fortunate than me and I wanted to help them. As an eleven year old I didn't understand that there were administration costs, I just fundraised and there were no questions asked.

A decade and a half later I am a mother, and while I'm coming to terms with this new identity that I've taken up, I have made a decision to do more to help people some how. While I don't have the money to get on a plane and feed the hungry physically, there are things I can still do. And while I've tried to promote and get excited about Live Below the Line of course there had to be some comments about what I was doing on a Facebook photo (sometimes I hate Facebook) and generally gave me the gist that what I was doing wasn't worth while. That living on $2 a week is not going to help anybody.

While the act of living on $2 is not going to generally help anybody, and just like fasting food for 40 hours doesn't do much in itself, it's the greater awareness that makes a difference. This is in no way a detox. In no way do I think this will be easy. In no way is my food going to be incredibly super healthy. But this is something we value in our family. Children won't ask cynical questions like how much is going to fund a fancy office in Southbank. Children will make real connections with what you do. And as much as I could sit quiet about what I'm about to do and let it pass by, then how would other people ever see what I'm up to and feel inspired?

I think this guy knocks it on the head:

(yes I realise Live Below The Line is with the Oaktree foundation, I just like the point Tom puts across).

So anyway, cynical Facebook comments aside, today was shopping day! It was actually a lot of fun because Hendrik was as excited about it as I was. Luke wasn't though. Luke despises food shopping.

We walked around with my Note 2 in my hand and wrote down all of the things we bought and the costs. We were in the nut aisle when we realised we were $2 over budget. I sadly put the mixed nuts back and bought some mandarins with the extra $1.70 we had. It was actually really a mathematical challenge, one that I can see us valuing throughout the years as Luke grows older and we can teach him the value of money and then link it with greater world issues.

I carefully positioned the groceries in the shopping trolley, stuck my bottom out like a true posing instagrammer and huzzah:

All with 25c to spare. But damn we forgot eggs! Oh well, that's the weight of our negligence. I think next year I want to be way more strategic about this.

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