1. Unnecessary death & illness persists. For example, over 20,000 children die every day from easily preventable causes. The UN has made progress on health but much more improvement is required & we all need to make it our top priority.
2. Education is your life-long responsibility. Take advantage of whatever schooling you can get, but keep reading & thinking for yourself too. Encourage others & make sure your public education system improves.
3. Justice & fairness of process can always be bettered. You have to do your part by engaging with the political processes & by voting for change or to ensure hard-won rights are preserved.
4. We are using up the planet's resources each year faster than the planet can recover. In the process we are trapping more energy into the global system & making the climate more volatile. This is not sustainable & will cause more & more suffering & conflict.
5. Time is the most valuable thing we experience. Have fun & be happy, but don't squander your time on negative hateful stuff, & never be bored - there's always something else to do. The weekends get shorter as you get older. Get up earlier to compensate for this :-)
6. Information is what persists - by raising kids, painting a picture or writing a book, for example, you are transferring information into the future. Never be driven by technology, but always work out what you actually need to do first.
7. Most articles you read on-line are highly formulaic with little actual content. They'll draw you in with an interesting image & a teasing title, like "Eight things you really need to know...". Do read some recommended books for depth.
8. There are, of course, more than eight things you really need to know, these are just the ones I think are the most important & indeed this point IS the eighth most important thing to know...
But enough of my ideas for now, what are your suggestions for the top things we really need to know?
