Voices

So, I was thinking...

And it's never a good thing when I do either. It can end up making me angry at injustice or end up with me in tears. Often both..

Today I was thinking about voices. About how just the other day one man wanted people to hear what he had to say so much so that he created a bomb to go off in a city centre, then travelled and shot another 60 or so teenagers to their death. All just because he thought that people should listen to his opinion on immigration and politics. In his quest to make his voice heard he physically silenced 76 people. As the prime minister of Norway said, talking to the youth of Norway;

“ This attack on Utøya was also an attack on the dreams that young people had of contributing to a better world. Their dreams were brutally shattered.  

Your dreams can be a reality... You can make a difference. Do it! My challenge is simple: Get involved! Care!! ”

It is an atrocity that he was selfish enough to commit these crimes. However, this selfishness is not something that is isolated only to madmen with guns. To some extent we are all silencing others, and being silenced at the same time.


Yet another, even greater silencing is happening as all this has happened. We are busy worrying about a singer who has died or about a madman in Norway, yet in Africa millions of would-be scientists, doctors, politicians or lawyers are dying just because they don't have enough food to keep their bodies going... their voices are being silenced too. Drowned out because we don't want to hear it, because there are greater things on our minds. Governments are hesitating because they are in debt, and because they have no money to spare at the moment.

It made me angry that they cared about a bit more debt than peoples lives.


Then, as I reached to take out chocolate to cheer myself up that I bought yesterday, I thought, "Surely I don't need this chocolate."


My mind, at this point, exploded into thought:
"Surely I don't really need the chocolate, I don't really need the clothes I bought last week. Hang on!! People all over Britain will be saying the same thing when they hear about the African droughts 'It's such a shame! I wish the governments would do a little more. I'd help, but I'm struggling with money myself at the moment!!' "


...    "It made me angry that they cared about a bit more debt than peoples lives."

I'm in debt too at the moment. I'm living out of my bank overdraft, and will be counting on my first paycheck from my new job in a restaurant to get me out of the overdraft. But hang on.. I'm doing the exact same thing I'm angry at the governments for doing. I care about a little bit of money more than I care about peoples lives. All that sadness and anger I feel at peoples voices being silenced now feels very hypocritical if I'm not doing something to help too.

Therefore.. I decided today that I don't care about money or putting myself in a little more debt if it means I can feed people that will otherwise die, so I'm going to give all that I earn on my next pay date (about a month and a half's wages) to the funds that give food to Africa. It might not be much money, but it will keep a couple more voices alive and shouting, and it will mean a few more dreams realised.

“ You can make a difference. Do it!                  

                          My challenge is simple:get involved.”

Challenge Accepted.

Secretly frustrated..

It all stems from not being who I could be. I know this, so do my parents, though every attempt at trying to make me be who I should be, both on their part and on mine, seems to come to nothing. I've been thinking a lot about where this boredom with life has come from, and in my case, especially, I think it stems from having spent so much time online.

My generation has been so lucky with the innovation and recent massive expansion of the internet. It has made our lives so much easier and simpler. You now no longer have to trawl though shop after shop to look for the cheapest option, and you never have to look in multiple books to find the information you're after, you can just Google it. Any Psychology Essay you could ever want can be written using information on Yahoo Answers.

I think somehow this is a shame. Everything moves so fast now that people are impatient, and they want everything constantly, everything happens instantly, that you never need wait for anything. You never want for company or have to feel lonely because you'll always always find like-minded people online. Because of this, the generation growing up never needs to train themselves in patience, or in spending time alone with your thoughts. Reading a novel set in ancient Japan recently, I'm amazed to imagine that the protagonist spends several months on his own in the forest, waking up at midnight and meditating on thoughts, training his body and mind at the same time. I secretly wish I had the patience, self awareness and discipline that it all must bring.

Because of this lack of very important traits, I think we, certainly I, miss out on opportunities I would love to have, and love to be able to do. I don't have the discipline now, for instance, at university to make myself work. I don't have the self awareness to know what I really want to do in life. I do have dreams, some from myself, some from God about my future, but have no idea how to achieve them, no idea how to set things in motion. And I frequently just feel frustrated with myself, for not being able to do any of this.

Life would simultaneously be a lot simpler and a lot harder if we didn't have internet. It would be so different, yet so refreshing if people looked to spend time in the simpler things in life like going for a walk in the evening and taking photos, or climbing a hill just to look and the view and think, instead of just drowning boredom in things like YouTube or Facebook.

I wish there were some way to change the teenage years I had so I can iron out the faults I now seem to have, imbedded in my personality. It's an impossible idea to do that of course, but I do hope there's some way of changing myself.

Maybe then I'd be less frustrated.