Sheltered

If you are reading this, I'm sure you have quite a privileged lifestyle. I am not saying that you are a trust fund baby, drive some fancy car, and live in some amazing apartment, but for the most part- we have the internet. We have the time to view blogs. We have to time to explore new ideas, do things we love, have hobbies and time to waste. Well maybe not time to waste as an insult, but we have those luxuries.

I am a college student. While most claim that they are broke, eat ramen noodles, or survive on a hotdog a day, I can fairly say I am healthy, make myself pasta, beef, cookies, etc. Despite stressing out on papers, group projects, presentations, internship, I still have the time to vent to friends, go out and also have fun. I am under heavy financial aid that pays for my private university tuition, and I pay my own bills (except the cellphone). With the money I have made waitressing and receiving random scholarships, I paid my way so far for university, living, and travelling around the world. I am not using this post to brag about me, but for those students who always complain that they have no money, yet have their parents pay their tuition and claim to have a stock of frozen foods in the freezer as meals, perhaps they have their priorities wrong. If they complain so much about money, and here I am paying for my education, then they need to seriously re-evaluate what they are doing to make themselves so "poor". Being a "poor" college student is a saying, but there are always ways around it. While my parents instill this idea that I should not be travelling so much and others wonder how the heck I can afford it all, I just do. I am not extravagant, but I also don't think that because I don't have money I can't do it.

So the point of this post was actually thinking about others in a 3rd world country. How kids in a Colombian Peace Community can still have fun laughing, playing ball, and hang out with their friends despite the fact that the paramilitaries, guerrillas, or some other armed groups may find some reason to attack them. Places where there are car bombs being blown, killing people every day. When 33 people died in the VA-Tech shooting yesterday, it was plastered all over the news nonstop all day. Really, though it is quite shocking and being the "deadliest shooting so far in US history" is it necessary to give it so much media attention?

And then, to have students starting to point fingers blaming the university for sending out the email 2 hrs later claiming more lives could have been saved if the warning was sent out earlier. We so easily blame others for mistakes made in order to make ourselves feel better about the events. Of course there are times when it is obviously necessary to point out that others did something wrong, but before then, take a good hard look at the situation and yourself before blaming others. It is ridiculous to accuse others for the actions, or maybe this is the "self destructive" part of me saying how we should see if we can link this to ourselves first before others. This is domestic news. If 33 people killed in one event is the biggest of our worries, then we're quite sheltered for sure.

I'm sure most of you don't care because it doesn't affect your comfort zone. Or maybe it does and then you brush it off since it is uncomfortable to think about. But people are constantly killed in poorer regions. Or they starve, not having any means to obtain or grow food. People are killed for their organs, later to be sold on the black market to rich people hoping their "loved one" survives. War. We take a life to gain a life. We selfish people shocked over something "close to home" have no idea what it is like out there in the world, with no umbrella over our heads when it rains, no bullet proof vest to save us in a line of fire, no dirt to even eat in hopes of nutrition. We were lucky to be born into the homes we have, the lives we live, and a hope in the future. Am I saying to save them all? No, its not possible.

Yet I am the same girl who claims she'll die for her beliefs. Sacrificing my life for what I believe in. Yet I wonder the day when I do die, and how I die, the way I will react.