Indifference

A wise man named Peter Marshall once said “A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.” If that was the case we would all live in a world where people said they were going to change the world and meant it. A world where politicians actually did the things they said they would do. Wouldn’t a world be a better place then? However, the world isn’t a better place because mostly no one means what they say or even keeps their word about helping out to change the world for the better. The world is filled with liars, murderers, thieves, rapists, and many other bad people because the people in charge of ridding society of these people couldn’t care less. It’s not that they want the world to be a horrible place, it’s just that they are apathetic and in most cases, being apathetic is worse than feeling extreme emotion (whether love or hate) , and as Elie Wiesel puts it “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

          Any ways, returning back to the original quote, I agree with Marshall’s quote because when someone has no feeling toward something they are supposed to do, like for example gardening, they wouldn’t don’t do it with very much enthusiasm, which would consequently make a very ugly and slipshod garden. Now if this saying applies to gardening, imagine how true it is when it applies to changing the world. When you are indifferent toward something, it is worse than hating it because at least when you hate it you show emotion, while being indifferent towards it means you couldn’t care less about it.

Can you be a great teacher if you were indifferent to kids? Could you be a great president if you didn’t care about the people you were ruling? Of course not. Achieving greatness is already hard enough, but to achieve greatness without caring for it would make it near impossible.

For example when a teacher gives an assignment about a topic you are not particularly interested in, you usually don’t do very well on that assignment. However if the teacher gives out an assignment that you like or care very much about, you will do very well and get a good grade on it.

          The moral is that you cannot do something great if you do not care for it. This applies to everything from cooking to yes, even changing the world. Hating isn’t the worst thing we can feel toward doing something because that requires emotion. Indifference is a cold stone barrier that separates you from any emotion or feeling and keeps you from succeeding in any and everything you do. That’s why you should always find a way to care in order to achieve whatever you want. Whether it’s gardening or changing the world, a little caring goes a long way.  

Friends

If a person was to ever make a list of the people most dear to them, he/she would probably have their friends at the top of the list. Friends are an essential part to everyone’s lives, especially to teenagers who need others they can relate to and pour their heart out to. The meaning of the word “friend” goes beyond what any dictionary can define it. A friend is someone that helps you out when you are in a jam, a pal that is with you in the good times and the bad, and a companion that never tries to deceive you. That’s why I  love the following quote by Joseph Roux, who said “We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.” For me, nothing else other than this quote can sum up the importance of a friend and the deep anguish of losing them.

       He does not use descriptive language or metaphors or hyperboles. He doesn’t drone on and on endlessly about how it’s horrible to lose a friend and he doesn’t even talk about he would feel if he lost a friend. The way Roux drives his point home is by stating simple fact, and then a concluding sentence that leaves whoever reads it reflecting about how true it is. No one really thinks about what Roux mentions in his quote because it either doesn’t cross their minds, or they believe that friends come and go but family is finite so family is much more important. However, for the English language and many other languages not to have a word for someone who has lost a friend, makes us face the harsh truth that losing a friend is so awful and unbearable that a word hasn’t been made and probably will never be made to come close to defining the pain that comes along with losing a friend.

Unless a person has actually been through it, they never really can relate to a person who lost a friend because it is not something that can be described with words, but felt with feelings. If I ever lost my best friend, or any of my other friends for that matter, I would feel lost and wouldn’t know what to do. Taking our friends for granted is easy to do, but when we hear this quote, it remind us that friends are special things that shouldn’t be let go to waste and that there is still yet a word to be created to describe the unfathomable loss of a friend.

Revenge

A wise man named Mahatma Gandhi once said “an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” I like this quote because it seems that the message this quote tries to convey is usually the answer to many people’s  problems, but of course nobody listens and consequently most of society’s problems are the result of it. In this quote, Gandhi is alluding to the Hammurabi code that states “an eye for an eye”, which states if someone wronged you, you must go after that person and wrong him the same way he wronged you. Gandhi was a peace activist and despised this quote because he believed no good could come out of revenge.

The great thing about this quote is that it can be interpreted literally and metaphorically. Its literal meaning translates to the following; if a person stabs another person’s eyes, they will then (according to the code of Hammurabi) pluck one of the other person’s eyes out. This would keep going on until both people are blind and have exhausted energy on something useless like revenge.

This quote doesn’t only apply to eye-plucking and literal blindness. It also means getting revenge from someone who has wronged you. However you will only make him retaliate and eventually there will be a dark and negative veil around you and the other person and neither of you will be able to see past the confusion and deceit, ultimately making you and “the whole world blind”.

Revenge turns people against each other who could have otherwise solved their conflicts in a more peaceful manner and not to mention, revenge is the sure way to make sure that a relationship can never be the same way again.

Besides, when has revenge ever helped anyone? Wars and family feuds and untimely demises are the only products of revenge. Wouldn’t Romeo and Juliet still be alive if their families didn’t feud endlessly until they eventually forgot why they were fighting? Wouldn’t Achilles still be alive if he didn’t get revenge from Hector by dragging his lifeless body around in his carriage? Wouldn’t most wars not even start if a country or a dictator  didn’t take it upon themselves to get revenge? Not only does no good come out of revenge. It spawns more evil, more lies, and more anguish.

       I personally had fits of rage where I too thought revenge was the best course of action, but all that time spent thinking negative and hateful thoughts could have been spent instead on just calming down and forgetting what happened. Having this “eye for an eye” mindset can make a person do something they will regret later on, and that’s why we should take Mahatma Gandhi’s word of advice and not take it upon ourselves to get revenge.

Childhood

As James Fiebig once said, “Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.” If only these wise words can be told to today’s generation. While growing up is an inevitable task we must endure to fill natures course, some people are doing it at warp speed. Today’s youngsters are so open eyed to a world that once had a sign on it saying “you must be this age to enter.”

The media encourages kids to grow up and start learning about things that are way too mature for their age group. It makes us wonder what happened to those innocent little children that used to jump rope and giggle whenever they heard an adult say a bad word. But most importantly it makes us wonder if we were ever like that or if we ever started talking about that certain topic when we were their age. Girls who are 10 years old are getting massages and facials to “unwind from a very stressful day.” What kind of stress!? Were they torn between using the pink or red crayon to color their butterfly with? Or are they relaxing because they had a fight with their best friend over who liked Hello Kitty more? Today’s atmosphere doesn’t help either. Pop culture is encouraging little boys to start talking like the rap singers they listen to and for little girls to dress like the dancers in the rap videos. Movies and music can also have some very suggestive material that unfortunately does not go unnoticed by children. It’s called PG-13 for a reason people. It seems like the interval in a person’s life that allows him or her to be a child is decreasing at an astonishing rate and there is nothing we can do about it. Kids are starting to lose their innocence and their childhood more and more as they are exposed to a society that rushes them to adolescence, adulthood, and old age, leaving them wondering “how did I get here so fast?”

          That’s why I like this quote so much. It states that no matter how old and bitter and senile we get, we will always have an inner child in us that will always be devastated when “a scoop of ice cream fall[s] from the cone” (Fiebig). It helps bring us back to a safe place where the worst thing we can do is sneak some vegetables to our dog under the dinner table and go to bed at nine o’clock instead of our normal bedtime of 9:30. With this quote we remember a life we yearn to get back. A simple one. A happy one. Because we all know that in lieu of the cars and the cellphones and the IPods, a part of us aches for our bedtime “blankies” and  warm hot chocolate.