Science has been claiming to have ‘almost found the cure for cancer’ for over 50 years. There is a logical reason for this of course, but the problem is due to this, my generation grew up thinking of cancer as ‘incurable’. Once you’ve got it, you just accept it and do nothing until you die.
As things stand, our generation is going to become known as ‘the generation that did nothing’ or ‘the generation that didn’t care. Almost everyone either doesn’t know what’s going on in the world, doesn’t care, or won’t do anything about it.
There was a massive earthquake in Nepal and the only reason I found out about it was by doing research for an article in english class. No one talks about it, and those who do know what happened aren’t doing anything to inform people of it or help.
It’s the same thing with almost every tragedy, big or small. People think ‘Oh that’s horrible…’, then move on with their lives. We could scream at them ‘DO SOMETHING’ and they would only look up from their phones long enough to see if we would do it again so they could post it on Vine.
We spend so much time looking at the great, crazy, hilarious, awesome things that other people experience online that when something interesting is actually happening in real life we don’t notice.
A few weeks ago, eighty students from my school, went to New York City and while we were there went to see an off-broadway performance. We must have been waiting outside for 20 minutes and yet none of us noticed the gaping hole of destruction, or the flowers, pictures, and letters surrounding it just across the street. The only reason we saw it at all was because after the show we were asked for donations to help repair the damage from a fire.
We get our information from social media so unless Kim Kardashian just donated a ton of money to some charity, we don’t know it exists. Almost no one watches the news and even fewer people read the newspaper, especially the younger generation, MY generation.
Even the events that do get a lot of publicity like the earthquake in Haiti a couple years back, after a month or two, they flicker out of everyone’s lives. Everything is so fast now that we never pause to just think. It’s forward, forward, forward, we have to keep going forward as fast as we can and no one knows why. There is no finish line, no trophy at the end of the course, there isn’t even a race, and yet we’re sprinting the ‘marathon’.
Of course social media isn’t totally at fault, we’ve been raised to focus on us. Go to school, do well, get a job, get married, have kids, retire, die of cancer. That’s the basic average ‘life-plan’. In school we don’t learn about government, current global issues, anything that isn’t in our personal little career bubble.
However, just like cancer has chemo therapy, there are exceptions to our generation of lazy people. There are people who take action, stay informed and help out. People who look up. Chemo isn’t a cure though it’s a treatment. It isn’t enough to have a few people take a glimpse every now and then.
The real problem, our ‘cancer’, is that our actions don’t just affect our generation, they affect everyone, all future generations, and the fate of the planet itself. Most people think ‘well what can I do? I’m just one person.’, but that’s just it, you’re ALL thinking that. What would happen if everyone decided not to vote because they were just one person and couldn’t make a difference?
Our generation is sick and you’re the cure, and so is your neighbour, and his/her neighbour, and every other human being on the planet. Maybe, the next generation won’t care, or the next, or the one after that, but eventually someone will and by then their challenges will be infinite. Make a difference and be more than just a treatment. It only takes one person to come up with a cure, but there’s no purpose to a cure you don’t use.
I wanna do my part to take a look around. This blog is going to be my way of sharing the information I've gathered with you so that you can share it with the people you know and so on. That way, even if I don't make a difference, at least I tried.
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