This is a world where secrets are easy to come by but harder too keep. This world where social media is king we take our private lives and make them public. Putting ourselves out there completely, begging for honesty from others but swiftly shutting down whenever their honesty is colored with criticism and personal bias. We become judge, jury and mental executioners of others, finding utmost pleasure in tearing them apart in the courtroom of our mind, where they can’t fight back. It taints us so much that the minute they criticize something we do, rather than be rational human beings with critical thinking skills, possibly searching ourselves deep down to see if maybe their observations just might be able to help us change ourselves for the better, we lash out at them and defend ourselves. After all this world is one where there is nothing more important than how you feel. Where despite all evidence to the contrary, we are still believe that the world revolves around us. That it owes us something just for us existing. Rather than allow ourselves to see criticism as an opportunity to progress and change or stay the same based on careful consideration, we become content to fester in who we are now. We are satisfied to stand back and say, “I am owed this because the world isn’t fair” It’s a world where we become so terrible that we can’t wait to log in to our Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like just to lash out at other from the safety of our own homes and computers. Where we are free to say what we want and if someone responds in a way that differs from how you think they should we can just call them stupid and others just like us will give it a thumbs up to reassure us that it’s totally okay. Maybe we should take the time to stop and realize that in this world where everyone is fundamentally flawed in some way or another all we really have is each other to help make the world a better place. The only way to do that though, to really change the world, is to start at home and work on changing the things about us that might be holding us back from really being apart of something bigger than ourselves. Only then can we really make any kind of difference.
Zihan Zhang
Ruth
Conrad Nicoll
Danielle Wesselink
Paulo Miro