Wednesday, July 29, 2009

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

I don’t watch the news anymore. It’s sad and depressing all the time. Even my local news rarely has anything good to say. Even here we have murders, rapes, death and destruction all the time. The local news seems to downplay anything good, saving all the human interest stories until after the weather when everyone has pretty much tuned out anyway. It really makes me wonder if the world is truly going to end soon.

Unlike a lot of people I don’t think the world is going to end because of some preordained set of circumstances. I don’t think that the Lord is going to call people home and the Antichrist will reign for years before the end. I think we will create and execute our own destruction. Our selfishness and utter disregard for our fellow man will be the end of us.

When you have children raping and murdering other kids and a parent killing their own flesh and blood for no reason at all something has to change or we might as well just kill ourselves off. Why do any of us deserve the opportunities we have been given when all anyone worries about is themselves and the latest and greatest new toy they can buy? We are supposedly in a recession of epic proportion but Harry Potter can make million in one hour. While there are children dying due to lack of food and shelter people are spending hundreds of dollars on cell phones that will be obsolete in a year.

Is this for sure signs of the end of the world? I truly hope not. I pray to a higher power, any higher power if such a being exists, that we all wake up and stop thinking of only ourselves. I wish for a better world, a world where a soldier dying in a senseless war matters more than a drug addicted pop star who has been accused of atrocities that would put the rest of us in prison. I dream of a world where no child goes to bed hungry and where the people in power actually care for the people they have sworn to serve. I might as well be throwing pennies in a wishing well for all my hoping and wishing though because no one really cares about others and the people who do care, who are aware of the world around them are the people without the power to actually bring about change.

Our narcissism has spawned the children of today. Kids who can’t tell you who the vice president of our own country is, much less anything about the world outside their bubble of self centeredness can tweet about how horrid their lives are and truly believe what they are saying because they have been raised to think that they are truly the center of the universe and have no idea what true suffering is. People get so wrapped up in themselves that they forget that it is their duty, their responsibility, to contribute something to society. They forget to teach their children manners and respect because they are too busy working 80 hours a week so that their child won’t feel bad about not having a $500 game system.

When I look at the world around me it makes me sad and angry to see that people truly can’t see what they are doing wrong. They can’t see that their petty problems could be solved by taking responsibility for their own actions and accepting blame which would free them and give them the opportunity to do something with their lives. They worry about what the people down the street think of them if their lawn isn’t perfect. They never realize that the people down the street only attempt perfection to impress the people around them. Everyone gets caught in a cycle and no one notices that the one family on the block who isn’t outwardly perfect and upwardly mobile needs help. No one thinks to offer their time or money to those people, all that occurs to them is that those people are decreasing their property value with their tall grass and broke down cars. When the sheriff comes to evict them they are thankful to have those bad seeds out of their neighborhood. When they see the children on the news in a few years for robbery or worse they are grateful that their children didn’t have to know them. They feel like they dodged a bullet and the truth is that they could have stopped the bullet altogether.

People take the time to march against homosexual marriage and protest at abortion clinics without ever taking the time to talk to the people they are so hell bent on keeping down. They don’t see people, they see causes and if they took the opportunity to see the people their thinking would change altogether.

There is so much hate in the world today that you can feel it if you stand in a crowded room and just listen. There is a palatable tension in the air surrounding us and no one stops in their self centered quest for happiness to notice it. If we all took a collective breath and chose to see the people around us we would all be better for it. Stop looking for causes and things to be against and start making changes in our own lives and in our own self and find things to stand for. Stand for the children, the downtrodden and the lost ones, people who never had a chance could be something great if only someone would give them the time, give them a chance.

We won’t do anything of those things though. People as a rule are so selfish that it becomes a handicap. They see a 16 year old thug and write him off, never trying to understand how he got to where he is. Instead they say he will amount to nothing and because of that attitude he won’t. He’ll be just another lost soul, another headline story on the news because no one cared enough to show him that he could be better than his circumstances.

When you read or watch the news today don’t look at the criminals and the sad stories and be thankful it isn’t you. Look at yourself and wonder what you can do to change things, what you can do to make the world around you better. Take the time to reach out to the people are down and teach your children with actions, not words. We can make a difference if we only try.

3 comments:

  1. I too have been avoiding the news because it's just a shooting followed by a carjacking followed by another baby found dead. TOO depressing. We were talking this weekend about endtimes and how people think it's going to be 2012. Older generations say civilization is proof it's getting worse and worse but I always say, "It CAN get worse and probably will." I personally don't believe it's going to be our generation...but it's not millions of years away either.

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  2. Our world is in a very precarious situation right now. With recession and layoffs some are prone to perform acts against society they would not even conceive of in the past. Tempers flare a little more nowadays just out of sheer frustration because many of us do want to make the world a better place but we can't. All we can continue to do is hope for better circumstances ahead.

    P.S. I definitely hope it will be well past 2012. Nice blog, Amanda.

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  3. He’ll be just another lost soul, another headline story on the news because no one cared enough to show him that he could be better than his circumstances.

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