The news is so entertaining...to some people. To me, a junior in college, it's irrelevant. At least it use to be.
Three days before classes started, I had to schedule one more class to have the minimum credits to start off my semester. Easy. I thought "I'll take an easy genEd get an A, maybe boost my GPA a little bit."
Fast forward and here I am week 6 writing this letter.
I sat in class today listening to my professor go on and on about climate change and why it's happening. Sitting there doodling in my notebook until he puts on the typical "save the environment" movie we watch almost every class.
I shut my notebook, looked up, and began to actually pay attention. This man from the Maldives comes on discussing the history of his country. He begins to talk about the struggle of power in the government and my jaw just drops. He talks about their last President whom in his first three months sent 480 people to jail. He discusses being beaten on more than one occasion, and being sent to jail twelve times in the past twenty years. Now I knew the whole point of this video wasn’t to learn about the Maldives, but to learn about the environmental changes happening there.
That’s when it hits me. Islands are shrinking because sea levels are rising. Sea levels are rising around nearly two-thousand islands known as the Maldives and most people in the United States have no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea the Maldives are shrinking, that there are no regulations over seas to keep American companies from polluting other countries, or that Venezuela temperatures are rising so much that amphibians and crops are dying.
I could probably pull a thousand different stories, similar to the Maldives environmental changes, and have the same thoughts.
I used to not give a shit. It’s not happening here so why does it matter. I don’t think that’s the point. I think the point is that it COULD happen here and if I was born into another life that would be my situation.
I don’t think people should have to fight for their rights alone. No one should really have to fight alone for anything. We live in a world that cares about themselves. When we should be living in a world that cares about each other.
Whether we do something directly or indirectly it all matters. Everything we do matters. Whether we like it or not we need to step back into reality and look around at what’s going on in the world, not just our backyard.
I guess the whole point of me writing this letter was to get out my frustration. Mostly because I’m so pissed off that I never knew about any of this. The fact that if I never took this class, I would NEVER know about any of this.
To me it doesn’t matter if anyone reads this, but if someone happens to come across it and get pissed off at themselves too then I think my purpose and point of this was made.
From Someone Who Use to Not Give a Shit
