Lucky in most respects

Let me set the scene. I was walking home a couple of weeks ago, it must have been about 8ish in the evening. I was tired, ridiculously hungry and had the worst chub rub going.

As I was walking down the road I spotted a group of three people outside a pub. My initial feeling was slightly uneasy and I thought about crossing the road to avoid them but then I thought actually, no, I'm not going to allow myself to be intimidated, I'm going to walk right past them. As I got closer I grabbed my rucksack more tightly but I made sure I was walking with an air of confidence.

Just as I passed them, one of them shouted out 'Do you want a finger?'.

I didn't stop walking but I was so stunned. Do I stop and turn around and react in the way I want to? No, I can't do that because it would be one against three and they would definitely overpower me if they got angry at all. So instead I had to keep walking, quietly seething. I can't describe the feeling exactly but the even that short sentence made me feel completely violated. And do you know what my overwhelming feeling was after I had stopped being so angry?

Relief.

Because I'm lucky. I'm lucky because:

- I'm not one of the more than 200 million women who have undergone Female Genital Mutilation

- I'm not part of the 1/3 of the population who have been physically or sexually abused by an intimate partner

- I'm not one of the 750 million child brides

- I'm not one of the 120 million women under 20 subjected to forced sexual intercourse or other forced sexual acts

I'm sure you catch my drift and I could go on. If you're interested, the stats are from The World's Women 2015. There are some incredible people doing some amazing things but there is still so much work to be done around the globe. If it's not happening on your doorstep, it doesn't mean it's not there.

I recently had a conversation with someone about wanting to fix the world. You can't on your own and you can't solve everything, it would be exhausting and frankly, there's too much for one person to do. But as Caitlin Moran said in Moranifesto, just do your square on the patchwork quilt. We can't rely on one person to do it all but if you can focus and make small changes then the big changes follow. That keeps me going on the days where I feel a bit hopeless!

I don't think there's a particular point or action to this bit of writing, but it knocked me a bit and then got me thinking so maybe it'll be interesting for someone else too!