Life as I see it

What's Important to Me 2

Classification: Sketchbook

Prompt: How confident do you feel in your ability to write about certain issues? Do you follow the news?

I feel pretty confident in my ability to write about climate change, if only because I have strong opinions and views on the subject. However I would need to do research in order to support my views. I do not know the facts and figures or the statistics for climate change. If the prompt is about climate change, then my ability to handle it depends on whether or not I need to cite facts and figures and sources, or whether it can be an opinion piece.

Now, I don't really follow the news, however I have a friend who is obsessed with watching the news, so I still get some information from her. I do listen to NPR in the mornings when my dad takes me to school, but other than that I don't really listen to the news. However, if the news just so happens to be on, then yes, I will watch/listen to it. But I spend most of my time either sleeping, daydreaming, or making up stories in my head.

Now as to which issue matter to me the most, that is climate change, because while other issues are important, none of them will matter in the long run if we all die because the planet is uninhabitable. Now I can speak about abortion and to some extent immigration laws with plenty of confidence, as I know a lot about them. Also I do feel quite strongly about these issues. I believe that immigration should be easier and legal, and I believe that abortion should not only be legal, but covered by health insurance providers. If only because of two simple reasons. First of all, if women are going to get abortions anyways, why not make it legal and safer. Second of all, say a woman gets pregnant, but the doctors find complications that, unless she gets an abortion, guarantees that it would kill both her and the baby. So why not allow her to get an abortion and at least save her life, instead of sentencing two people to death.

I think part of why I don't watch the news is simply because it makes me sad. It's full of violence, and families being torn apart because of immigration laws, and death, and fear. And I understand that that's important. The world just isn't a safe place, where no one gets hurt, and no one is ever afraid. 

That's just not how human beings work. 

There are monsters and there are sociopaths and there are demons. There's death and fear and pain and anger, and yet, we keep living on. We carry hope that we can make things better, and that we can get through the pain. And I think that that's amazing. I think it's amazing that even though there's racism, and homophobia and transphobia and xenophobia (fear of foreigners) and violence and pain and hurt and fear, we find reasons to be happy, and we smile and we have fun. And I understand that that's not the case for everyone. I understand that for some people, smiling is difficult, finding joy in life is hard. And to those people, I wish I could tell every single one of them, that they already have a reason to smile. They have people, strangers that they've probably never even met, who are rooting for them. And I wish I could give every single one of them a hug, and a joke to make them laugh. I wish that I could make everyone happy, and make everyone equal. Remove the fear and hate from the world, and make everyone get along. 

But I can't. 

Because I don't have superpowers. And I'm not a quadrillionaire. Yes, I am scared. Our planet is slowly suffocating. Almost like how we have fevers to kill bad bacteria when we get sick, except climate change is the fever, and the human race is the virus. But I have hope, and joy, and love and excitement. And I wish I could share it with everyone. I believe that eventually we can fix it, and we will survive. I have to. I have to believe.

Word Count: 689

# of Pages: 3