Dear Society,
How did we get here, and at what point, did we allow things to get so bad? There is progress being made, but to what extent, and at what cost? Keep in mind, progress is not always a good thing if the wrong kinds of numbers and statistics are increasing.
We have people afraid to go out into the world because they worry for their safety. Every other day tells a story of shootings here and terrorism there, and I am afraid to know what it is they don’t tell us. News today isn’t used to inform; it’s used as a form of control. How often do you see news about anything positive going on? ‘That’s not drama, so why would we ever show that?’ Each station is just catered to an opinion, and what we are told has less to do with facts than it does with how someone else feels about something. We latch onto one tidbit of information and claim we know everything about anything, instead of looking at both sides and forming our own stance on the matter. But do you blame us? You force feed us information as a scare tactic and then make us choose the lesser of the evils.
We stare at our phones and check apps that we most likely opened 4 minutes’ prior, but god forbid we miss an opportunity of feeling relevant. Our attention spans last no more than a minute, and we can’t go an hour without technology being involved. We do everything for likes and follows and then measure our worth based on those numbers. We are making the wrong people famous, because of what? All because they have a good plastic surgeon and a perfectly shaped ass? Or am I the crazy one for not wanting to keep up with the Kardashians? There are far too many young people believing that perfection is the standard of beauty, and instead of being their own person, we put magazines in their hands and tell them to look like ‘this’ and be like ‘that.’ We wonder why eating disorders have skyrocketed worldwide, and instead of addressing the issue, companies have been created to make a profit off someone else’s illness. All kinds of supplements are now being created so people can “Lose 20 pounds in TWO Weeks!” but how many of those same companies are telling you how unhealthy it is to do that? We need to start looking for permanent solutions versus temporary ones that just cause more problems down the line. Not only are people dying to be thin, there are more and more people dying because we are starting to lack a sense of self-control. Whatever happened to well balanced, and moderation? Society has somehow figured out a way to monopolize on binge eating, binge drinking, binge television.
We all answer the question, ‘How are you?’ with the same, ‘I’m fine’ answer, but how many of us actually are? We are so afraid of what someone else will think that it has become easier for us to just save face and put on a smile. Small talk has become the norm, and trending topics have become the only things we know how to talk about. Society today has put most of us on autopilot where routine is second nature, and we all go to work for someone else. We have been brainwashed into believing that our dreams are too big so instead of following them, we help build someone else’s, all the while wondering why we never feel fulfilled. It has become easier to blame our situations on past circumstances, and we feel trapped by what has happened to us, instead of breaking free of what we can no longer change. Suicide is on the rise, and yet, we all want to remain quiet about the elephant in the room. When will we learn that not talking about it, is what got us there in the first place? Mental illness is real, and here we are pretending that it’s something that will just go away on its own. Why do we treat people differently just because their brain was wired in a way that was out of their control? We don’t look down on people with broken bones, so why is it so hard to give the same respect to those with broken parts of the brain? We will never get better if we keep telling people that we are fine, and people will never heal what hurts if we keep telling them to just ‘get over it.’
I don’t mean to sound so harsh because I am well aware that there is still a lot of good out there; I am just worried that the cons are outweighing the pros. I know all that’s wrong won’t be fixed overnight, but at what point do we start working towards the greater good of all people? Why are we all picking sides in the first place instead of coming together? Why is it that it takes some kind of natural disaster, or tragedy to get people to take action? Why are we still fighting over which god is better, or what race is the best? People are ranked by how much they make a year as if that has anything to do with if they are a good person or not. Everyone seems to be in a competition for all the wrong things. No one knows how to be because too many people are focusing on being something that they are not. We need to stop asking ourselves, “What’s wrong with me?” and instead, fix the parts of the world that have convinced us we were ever wrong, to begin with.
How did we get here, and at what point, did we allow things to get so bad?
Sincerely,
Megan Lawrence
Thank you for reading. I appreciate you.