This is a book I'm working on about the effects of our parents' actions on our future. I've decided to give you an insert from the book. I hope you enjoy it, and as a call to action, we need to start caring for our own future before the people we thought we could trust it with destroy it for us..
"Where were you when it happened? Where were you when the first one happened? When the first bomb dropped and there was nothing you could do, how did you feel as your world was ripped from your hands and the loved ones you knew were not there anymore for you? I can tell you how it feels. I can tell you what it was like to lose everything in a split second. I can tell you what it was like to live in a world where they destroyed what I loved the most. I can tell you what it was like living a life with problems that others created with me, and what was I supposed to do about that. It was every man for himself. Every man was after what he wanted and didn’t care for the next. They wanted to survive. They wanted to live and do whatever was best for them. If I could go back to when it wasn’t like that, I would. If I could change the past, I would. But now, I have to live with it. And I have to live with the consequences.
The first water war started the second year after I escaped the shelter. I wasn’t the only one to escape, but I was one of the last. I was lucky to have escaped everything that happened down there. And I was one of the luckiest not to get sick from it all. I can honestly say, with everything I know, that if I was hungry enough, if anyone was hungry enough, they’d know the taste of something so dear to them. They’d know what it was like to live in a world where the only food was sitting right next to you. How could you live with yourself otherwise? How could you live with what you were about to do? You couldn’t, not if you were human.
So when I escaped, the world was turned upside down. The world was different, it was maniacal. It was hard and it was cold. It was like the coldest confinements of my solitary confinement when I was left alone. The people had taken this mentality of survival over service to the extreme, and when one person wanted something, that’s what they were going to have, whether they had to kill for it or not.
Within time, groups had formed to scrounge for materials and water. I myself was one of the few who remained alone. I walked alone, lived alone, and ate alone. But even I can say that what I did was wrong. I was lucky to find this building. I was especially lucky that I knew the man who owned it before. I was lucky to be the son of the man who owned the building. But I wasn’t lucky enough to stop the others from eating when they were starving. I wasn’t lucky enough to be secluded away. I wasn’t lucky enough to see the horrors of a generation. And I definitely wasn’t lucky enough to get away from the worst of what happened in the water wars."
This is a perfect example of what it could be like with the future our parents created for us if we don't do something about it now. If we cannot do what is necessary, caring for each other and our planet, we'll never be able to protect the future for the next generation.
