Tonight is RMU’s homecoming dance. Here I am, sitting on the couch in my on-campus apartment. My hair is (almost) perfectly curled. I’m thinking about what color I should paint my nails; there’s so many options with a black dress! But, I am drained and complaining because I was up half the night studying for a HUGE midterm I just took this morning. I feel like all my energy has been ripped from my body, I’m tired, and I am just plain grouchy. “Ugh, what a downer on homecoming weekend,” I think. Then, I go onto Yahoo news on my phone.
Oh. That’s right; Hurricane Matthew has slammed Haiti, leaving 300+ people dead (and they’re not even through searching). Innumerable amounts of people are losing all of their possessions. People are searching for their beloved pets, their friends, their children. They are coming out of whatever makeshift hiding spots they could muster to discover that they are now homeless. And now, that same storm is entering Florida-- my own country. So many more people are about to go through the same heartbreak. I am upset because I lost a few hours of sleep.
What else am I forgetting, in my little closed-minded world of little college problems? Well, there’s the fact that there have been two presidential debates that I have just not bothered to watch. This is perhaps the most talked-about election in our nation’s history, the first one in which I can vote, and I am too busy watching videos of people dancing with mannequin heads on to Halloween songs.
What else? I stumbled upon a photo of a boatload of refugees desperate to escape the terror and oppression of their homelands (in this case, several sub-Saharan countries.) Real people, people just like me, are running for their lives and fighting for a safe future for their children. People are trying to escape unfit countries teeming with danger and death, and I am worried about it raining on my way to the dance tonight.
This is a BIG problem, friends. I am closed-off to the world and its problems by the gates of my campus, the doors to my self-locking apartment. I do not have a television on which to watch the news, and suddenly I become a walking idiot! I know I am not the only person in this situation-- blind to the problems of so many because I can only see what is right in front of my face.
This is a call to action, both for you AND for me. Please, please take all of five minutes out of your day to think about a life that isn’t yours. Turn on your preferred news network, scroll a news site, or maybe just walk around and listen to people around you speak. Speaking personally, I feel awful sitting here in my living room as people on the other side of the world are frantically searching for their next meal, their belongings, their families.
I am worried for us. I think we are on a dangerous path. We are becoming selfish, only caring about something if it affects us personally. Real people are nothing more than numbers and statistics in studies and death tolls. We have to wake up! Step outside of your world for just a moment and think about the world-- your world. If you think about it, we all live here together. Anything that happens anywhere in the world affects us personally.
