Something Important
Completely bound by their limitations, people constantly settle for less. If an opportunity ever appears in which a traveler must climb a steep ridge or settle for a mile long grass plain, it is guaranteed that the thrill of the climb and the mystery beyond the ridge will coax the traveler up any challenging hillside.
But the world lacks its travelers. Raised to be careful and wary, the only people with any opportunities to make change stay seated behind comforts and luxuries. These more innocent souls remain ignorant to their potential and even the simplest tasks go undone do to the fear of undergoing any “serious” hardship. Occasionally, voices make their attempts in breaking the deafening silence of laziness. Occasionally, hard work breaks through these barriers, but more often than not, we exist as slaves to an overwhelming amount of apathy.
Why? Our brains, more than ever, are programmed to want immediate results. For that, we hold technology’s advancements accountable. With these advancements, media becomes a more selective platform. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people stopped watching television in favor of services available online. Making decisions on what people want to expose themselves to, they tend to veer away from the important issues that surround us in today’s world.
Acknowledging them leads to uncomfortable feelings and according to our evolving society, uncomfortable feelings are unacceptable. No. Indulging in anything other than entertainment hardly ever becomes a decision people seek to make, therefore making it a reason for newer generations to freely express their apathy. Impatience, avoidance, and last but not least the distortion of reality affect our present and future obstacles. Apathy entraps our posterity behind its serrated teeth in hopes of completely devouring their destiny. Among countless other first-world problems, our new parent, technology, guides us by the hand and feeds us everything we want to know.
At the touch of a screen, at the click of a button, at the command of our voice, technology smooths out rough spots in our lives and we unwittingly allow for its constant comforts. In a world where this occurs, the minds of all who take full advantage of these comforts eventually grow completely dependent upon them. Our brains, of course, adapt easier to pleasant transactions with the world, therefore making this whole event possible. Immediate access to entertainment and information created a habit that devastated our population with an impatience whose potency rivals that of an opiate. Breaking the habit takes a willpower that most seem to lack.
Do we need to? With impatience comes missed opportunities. With missed opportunities comes a severe scarcity in potential, originality, and success. Through every unique set of eyes a different story defines success, but patience almost always remains a necessity. Hardship in our endeavors exists as an inevitability, and it requires a careful patience to unlock the door beyond most hardships. Imagine a world without ideas because the creation of them, at times, exhausts people.
Imagine a place without light, without planes or cars, without chairs that spin all because taking the time to create such things proved too demotivating. If people give up on their dreams or goals as fast as they give up on waiting for a video to load, then our future of existence seems very limited. These limitations only grow when we choose to avoid our hardships entirely. Avoiding these hardships became easier with the help of a friend. The word “technology” loosely refers to a set of tools man creates in order to make tasks simpler.
While in many ways benefits sprout from these tools, certain disadvantages take their toll on society. As one of these tools, the internet, in recent years managed to make its way into every home and nearly every hand or pocket it can reach. Extensively overlooked, general information coming in the forms of television and radio still provides a base knowledge of the events taking place in the world. This information, of course, remains currently available on the internet, but either remains barely acknowledged or never acknowledged. Either way it hardly becomes, especially for newer generations, a subject worth searching for. Instead people preoccupy themselves with several forms of entertainment.
Once again this dilemma relates back to a comfortability we grew used to in recent years. “Why think about things that make me uncomfortable when I just want to play games or watch Youtube videos?” Maybe the case made in favor of that argument included something along the lines of ” I am not going to change anything in the world.” or ” I am not going to make a difference.” To that, the counter argument consists of a brief question beginning with the words: “What if..
.” What if that particular mind created all the right reactions and all the right processes in order to form a solution? What if any individual you saw kept the capabilities of changing the world under their hats and all it took to unleash them was the matter of knowing how or knowing that they could? That principal makes every unique mind and every creative soul an important unit in solving some of these problems or creating inspiration for others to do so. The first necessary step in that direction must include an appreciation for knowledge and a tougher skin for breaking through the more uncomfortable moments in our life. Through that wall lies a realm where many truths we acknowledge as facts unveil themselves as mistruths. Mistruths find a way into most minds from some of the earliest sets of memories.
By the time we hit adolescence, a moderate understanding of how the world works and a set of morals develop. But frequently the understandings and base values that engrave themselves in your mind begin with a certain amount of falsehood. An individual’s experiences up to this point define what their belief system consists of, and from these experiences a shadow of bias looms over the foundation on the belief system. The media only brings to life what they want people to notice, and they present it in a way that sways our feelings on the matter in their favor. Our parents often times make the same presentation of information and our minds at that point lack the skill set required to question it. The internet not only delivers the same sort of information, but it packages it all and shoves it down our throats and into our systems so fast that even important information loses its impact.
Wars, and global warming, and disease place only a minor part in our day to day life. Not only these but personal matters like family deaths, health issues, and relationships also fall down on our mind’s priority list to other things the internet offers. By the time our brains gain the capabilities necessary to challenge any of the information it already gathered, we find that nearly solid foundations must break in order to create values that please us. The act of breaking foundations sinks into the territory of something difficult. Therefore making it much easier for our youth to remain in an area where gullibility and ignorance isn’t really a “bad” thing.
From this, our society’s capabilities of maintaining constant apathy strengthens. An epidemic of laziness entraps the majority of individuals who stand at the feet of true obligations only to dismiss them as unimportant tasks. Success hides behind the doors of strenuous work and eludes the many passerbyers who avoid opening that door. Technology undoubtedly evolved our society into a more advanced culture but the depletion of common sense and motivation as a result of it make its advances almost not worth it. The problems that future generations must come to face grow to intimidating sizes, and a society whose faith in themselves seems almost non-existent will fail to stand in the way of total destruction. A society whose only travelers come completely unprepared to face their journey, flounder at the first steps.
The attitude set towards these tasks make them seem like inevitable defeats that await us in the future, but if we change way we see them the outcome foreseen may also change. Our foundations limit the capacity of our true voices and technology disheartens us into a room of silence filled with comforts lining the walls. Beyond this room lies improvement and later success. One step outside this room advances our story and changes the mood and setting of the whole thing. While we always risk falling on our first step, in the end only progress comes from it and our plot attains room to continue. In only one step.
