Distractions, distractions, distractions.

Life is full of all sorts of distractions, and often times we make our own distractions to put off doing the things we need/have to do. It’s hard to get past them; even in writing these few lines I’ve already been distracted by my phone twice.

It’s so easy to get off track, especially with so many enticing things. Whether it’s procrastinating studying for that test, or cleaning out your car, we can easily find things to distract us from doing it. Netflix can easily take the place of that book we need to read, and do I need to even give an example of something to distract us from cleaning up? Most of the time, literally anything will do.

But if we will admit it to ourselves, most of us spend a lot of our time distracting ourselves from much bigger things. Even though a lot of time these issues won’t be as glaringly obvious as the dirty dishes staring at us from the kitchen sink. We all know they are there.

You might distract yourself from your grief by overeating. You might distract yourself from your hurt by overspending, and maybe you distract yourself from your guilt by putting all your value in being better than the rest. There are millions of ways we can distract ourselves, and there are millions of ways that we all do. But are we sometimes distracting ourselves from even more than our personal issues? I think so.

In America even the worst off among us live pretty incredible lives compared to most of the world. And with most of our population living in the middle class we live like royalty compared to a lot of the world, even if it doesn’t feel like it because we don’t get to do all the things we may want to do. Living inside our comfortable, warm shells makes it hard for us to will ourselves to make a change. Sometimes it makes it hard to even admit that there is anything wrong, because if we do that then we know we’ll have to do something about it.

Instead, we distract ourselves from the issues around us. We shut our eyes and ears to the things around us, and we push it back as far as we can, sometimes so far that for a while we can forget it’s there. Living our privileged lives makes it easy for us to replace the truth and the need with whatever we can find to silence it. But just because we have been able to silence the things we don’t want to hear doesn’t make them any less true or important.

The truth is people are dying, babies are being killed, little refugee children and families are being turned away and are dying. Our own foster care system is failing, and because of it’s failings it is hurting a lot of already hurt children along the way. There are millions of homeless veterans on our streets. There are many issues around our country and around the world that so many of us are turning blind eyes to just because we don’t want to put in the effort.

We, as Americans, have a special privilege over most other countries because we were created as a people’s government, and we have a constitutional right to stand up to our leaders and demand changes, because quite frankly, we’re the ones in charge. But lately that seems to be something that we’ve forgotten. The government and it’s leaders aren’t something that’s just happening to us; we’re supposed to be the ones leading the charge and electing officials to represent us. Yet instead we’ve been lying on our backs just watching, and never intervening. How can we be upset with our presidential candidates? We have done nothing to stop them.

Our government was never meant to be separated into parties who can never get along. We are supposed be one people, continually fighting for liberty and justice for all.

Let’s not forget those sacred words. We must be continually fighting for our people, especially those that have no voice to fight for themselves. We cannot turn blind eyes to those that need our help and then be angered when our presidents and leaders do the same thing. They are supposed to represent us after all.

I urge everyone to look within them, and awaken that thing inside you that has always been nagging at you, the thing that brings you to tears at the thought of the injustice. I’m sure it’ll be different for everyone, but I urge you to find that thing within you, and to do something about it. You may not be able to change it, you may never fully succeed, but at the end of your life at least you will know, and the people around you, and the people whose lives you have touched will know that you did not stand by and let injustice take place right before your eyes. No, you believed those words in our "Pledge of Allegiance" and you acted upon them.