The Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World is always fascinating, because for every person listed, you know there are thousands of unknown others who are also humbly changing the world.

To my delight, under the Heroes section, Ang Lee (the Taiwanese-born director of Brokeback Mountain) applauds a Taiwanese woman, Chen Shu-chu, for giving an extraordinary amount of money away.

“Chen Shu-chu is a seller of vegetables in a stall in Taitung County’s central market, in southern Taiwan.  Out of her modest living, Chen, 59, has managed to donate nearly NT$10 million (that’s $320,000) to various causes, including $32,000 for a children’s fund, $144,000 to help build a library at a school she attended and another $32,000 for the local orphanage, where she also gives financial support to three children.

“What’s so wonderful about Chen’s achievement is not its extraordinariness but that it is so simple and matter of fact in its generosity.  ‘Money serves its purpose only when it is used for those who need it,’ she told a newspaper.

“And rather than bask in her celebrity, Chen seems to dismiss the whole thing with a wave of her hand, perhaps even with a hint of irritation.  ‘There isn’t much to talk about, because I did not enter any competition,’ she says.  ‘I haven’t really made any huge donations.’

“She’s planning to establish a fund to help the poor with education, food and health care.  Amazing, but of all she has given away, her greatest gift is her example.”

And then, a couple of pages later in the magazine:

Gloria Steinem writes about a young child bride fighting for her rights.

“There was nothing unusual or illegal about 12-year-old Reem Al Numery being forced into marriage with her 30-year-old cousin.  Yemen, unlike most countries, has no legal minimum age for marriage, and adult men sometimes marry girls as young as 8.

“As Reem told U.S. embassy officials, ‘When I protested, my dad gagged me and tied me up.  After the wedding, I tried to kill myself twice.’  That she escaped to protest in public is a measure of her exceptional courage and luck.

“Reem is one of the brave girl children who are risking everything to protest being sold into marriage by fathers and becoming the endangered and uneducated chattel of husbands.  Now living with her mother, she wants to go back to school.  Sadly, in Yemen a girl’s education traditionally ends at marriage, and she and her mother have no money to continue her schooling.  But Reem has been spared what is often another tragic fate: girls who give birth before 15 are five times more likely to die from childbirth than women in their 20s.  Not only the right to a childhood is at stake here; so is survival itself.”

Last night, as I was reading these amazing stories, I got to thinking that we all contribute to the world in some way–positively or negatively–and I wondered what my little blurb would read.  Would it be positive or negative?  How have I impacted others?  How have I bettered the world?

It’s like writing your obituary, except you get to read it.

Think about it.  What would yours say?

[Post image: Chen Shu-chu, photo courtesy of Taiwan Today]