A little journal from me. I believe, chance willing, nearly every human being in the world, with a little luck and intelligence, can change the entire nature of their world. A peasant soldier named Tokugawa unified a fractured Japan. A humble prince named Siddartha Gautama created a religion that dictated the rise and fall of empires. Five hundred years later the son of a carpenter began a movement that became the world’s largest religion, it too responsible for the liquid nature of world order.
I’d hate to compare myself to Jesus or Buddha. I may not change the world, but I may change /my/ world, and in the end that’s what matters.
My own Atomic Dog, I guess:
The days were simple when I was a kid. I had nothing to worry about except remembering my lunch money for the day. Times were nice, uncomplicated. I remember, when facing an odd challenge, such as getting a ball over a fence or some such, I?d tell my friends:
?I?m going to get it. Just watch me.?
Simple days, simple minds, simple phrases. Things are complicated now. In reality they?ve always been complicated, I just didn?t know it. Of course, the greatest complication in our recent history was September 11th. Not the occurrences of the day itself, but the response by America and the world.
It was interesting to see the reaction from people that day. That day some had near or total apathy towards the situation (my math teacher pushing the geometry lesson on us as we, or I, watch the second tower fall on the television still stays in my mind). That day some cheered, most cried. I sat, thinking. It?s hard to forget the images of that day, the ghostly concrete wasteland that had become ?ground zero?, the sight of Palestinian children and old women cheering in the streets, and of angry citizens waving American flags outside mosques and Muslim schools.
Time past slowly that week. I was glued to my television as it transmitted a slow stream of information and images to my confused mind. That week seemed like a month. Barely a second of my attention was not spent on NBC or CNN news. I can remember how shocking it was the first time I saw a commercial again.
The weeks, months, and year afterwards past quickly for me. Afghanistan and the ?War of Terrorism? was on the world?s mind. Mine was on new and old relationships and school. Then in the national timeline came the economy, the Catholic church, more terrorism, then Iraq.
Extremes. In any human argument there are two extremes. In this argument they are the war drum-beating Bushites and the anti-establishment ?peace-lovers?. One side calls the other tyrants. One side calls the other unpatriotic. Both sides scream freedom (one whispers security). Both are partially right. Both are very wrong.
The people with the most potential in the world are those who don’t use it. Those of us who remain silent while wars rage and empires fall around us. Those of us who look into the past and see the same patterns forming over and over in our current lives. We’re never on the extremes. We’re never the war mongers, we’re never the tree-huggers, we’re never the sophisticos who thumb their noses at the previous groups, thinking themselves the superior third party when they truly never get anything done, and we’re not the hidden elitists who preside over them.
I’m one of those people, those silent guardians of human destiny. I’m not going to stay silent for long.
I’m going to change the world. Just watch me.
By F****** E******
If this at least interested you a little, I’m glad.