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The Birth Is The Single Greatest Defining Factor For A Human Life

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Nicholas Thieme English 101 3/16/16 Mid-Term Essay Quality Living Birth. The very first moment that contact is made with everything outside the safety of the mother’s womb. A person does not decide where, how, when, or to whom they are born to. To each individual walking the earth it is simply a chance happening. There is no choice in the matter only an outcome. Gender, race, and birthplace all decided before the first breath is taken. Some may reason that depending on where a person is born it determines the outcome of their lives. Some may argue that genetic predisposition and nature work hand in hand write the story of an individual’s life, and that the single event of birth sets the trajectory of where each person ends up. Some may …show more content…

As Bob Harris states in the book The International Bank of Bob, “It’s one blind shot at a tine moving target. Win big at the birth lottery, and you get to poop gold by the kilo. Lose big, and you’ll be among the billion without even clean water to drink.” However, that is looking at the Birth Lottery strictly from the perspective of a monetary view, and life is not measured in terms of money. Winning big at the Birth Lottery does not necessarily guarantee that a person will be successful, especially when it comes to things such as joy, contentment, peace, and physical health. A person can be rich and educated, but completely devoid of joy. Here in the Western World the United States, or the “land of opportunity,” was ranked number 15 on the World Happiness Report in 2015. Jeffery Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and one of the editors of the World Happiness Report, as part of a Q&A session explained that “On the personal side, physical and mental health are extremely important in addition to income levels. Personal values are very important. People who are more generous, who express more orientation toward others, more compassion, are also systematically reporting that they’re happier.” Sachs goes on to say, “What we learn about the United States, is that while income has been rising, the social qualities have been worsening – the level of trust, the confidence in our government, has been going down.

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