Why? The word and the question that probably caused my parents endless headaches. Why is the sky blue? Why can’t I go bike riding after dark? Why should I pick up the dishes? Why can’t I bite my sister? It was more of a curiosity kind of why. I truly didn’t know the answers, so I asked hoping someone else did. I grew out of those kinds of questions a while ago, but lately I’ve been discovering that these “why”s have not gone anywhere. I never really stopped asking why and many don’t, but sadly there are many who do. Why? Good question. Another why question. Except now they’ve become rhetorical questions—questions for which I have no answers. These no longer take the form of curiosities about why I have to do something I don’t want to, but come in the form of truly mind-boggling, completely and utterly disappointing questions.
Why do Christians believe they have a monopoly on the “truth”? Why are they so judgmental and condescending and… dare I say it… blasphemous? Why is money usually the #1 driving factor in how people live their lives and what they can and cannot do with themselves? Why do so many people buy into this whole Wal-Mart shit? Why do people still feel the need to go to McDonald’s? Why do I think my questions are even valid and worth reading, let alone answering? Why are the wealthy unable to collectively help the poor? Why are people so turned off by starving-children infomercials? Why am I so turned off by them too? Those last few are the ones I’ve truly been thinking about lately.
I’ve seen a lot of sick stuff in this world. A lot of poverty. A lot of disease. A lot of cruelty and hopelessness and governmental oppression and racial oppression and pure hatred. A lot of fucked up shit… oh and if those words offend you, try going to Africa and seeing how the poorest of the poor live in this world. You don’t know what offensive is. All I’m trying to grasp is how we can sit in such oblivious luxury and truly be happy. Don’t get me wrong, not all Americans live “luxuriously.” But compared to the rest of the world, even the ones living below the poverty-line here are living better than 90% of everyone else on the face of the planet. I’m just sick of American ignorance. I love what our country represents, I just don’t think we know how to affectively live out that representation anymore. We think it’s our right to be cocky. I don’t remember that being part of the Bill of Rights. “you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney, you have the right to sit back and not give a damn about the rest of the world who cannot even comprehend what it is like to drive to work and have the mail delivered to their door and eat any type of food from any part of the world at any time of the day.”
I’m guilty too though. I heard a radio commercial about some starving-kid-in-Africa organization and I just wanted to turn the station immediately. That confused me for a minute. I had to check my pulse and realize if what I just thought was true and if so, what does that mean? Why am I going to Africa this summer again? Then I discovered that it wasn’t the infomercial that bothered me, it was the delivery of it. It was your classic give-a-few-dollars-a-month-to-a-kid-who-has-nothing-to-eat program. I just said to myself, it’s been done already. We’ve heard it before. We’ve seen the pictures. We’ve seen the video footage. We’ve heard the horror stories. And yet they’re still there, poorer than ever while we collectively keep getting richer. I have a problem with friends of mine who sit in their fully-furnished apartments and fully-stocked refrigerators and they watch these things with a 40 oz Big-Gulp in one hand and an iPhone in the other saying “I can’t watch this anymore.” Most switch the channel or turn it off. Their response is, “I don’t want to be depressed the rest of the day.”
And that’s when it dawns on me that it isn’t just the heartless people who bother me… it’s also the stubborn organizations who ignorantly believe the average American cares anymore. Their way of reaching people has completely stopped registering with the masses years ago. We’ve grown up with this kind of stuff. Live Earth. Live Aid. Live 8. Infomercials. The ONE campaign. It was “We are the World” back then and now it’s “Where is the Love” today. We are so accustomed to this shit that if we listened to it all, we’d go crazy and so we try to get as far away from the pain and suffering in the world as possible. We do it on the enormous global scale and we also do it on an individual scale. No one wants to hear about people’s problems. Except therapists. Good for them. Trying to put a band-aid on an open-heart wound is commendable stuff. The truth is, I want to do as much good that I can as possible. I would hope that every one of those organizations and campaigns and concert series would do wonders for people all over the place (which they truly have). But I’m also fully aware that there’s a whole lot of people who just don’t care. Don’t want to care. Don’t even bother. Don’t want to give money or time or their dreams and aspirations for the good of humanity. I just wish people could, for a second, put down their American pride and conceitedness and “blessedness” or whatever you want to call it and just open themselves up to whatever else is out there. The unknown. The known by some, but not-wanted-to-be-known by most. This is America. Fucking America. Collectively, we have the capabilities of doing wonders. Start caring about someone other than yourself.
