Shaped by our surroundings.

Society seems to be crumbling. There is no honor anymore. People do not look out for each other. Where the worst that could happen in a situation at one point in time would be a little fight or scuffle, it now almost always ends up with an ambulance rushing a gun-victim to the hospital, or worse yet - the morgue. One must ask themselves ... "how have we gotten like this?"

I was born 18 years ago in a small town in Pennsylvania. I was lucky, in a way, to be born into a very large, close, and strong family. I was raised by everyone in my family. I was a very sickly kid, so everyone took care of me. I spent most of my early childhood confined to the house, where I was exposed to adults, their conversations, and their wisdom much more than other healthy kids of my age.

I quickly learned to observe things, actions, and their impact on their surroundings. A lot of my knowledge and wisdom was quickly shattered when I was at an age where I could be alone. My learning curve was quickly shunted and instead, I was left to spend many hours with a television. T.V., although entertaining, could never captivate my attention. The moment I began to get healthy enough to venture away from the house, my imagination had grown larger than the cheap broadcasting offered to me.

It was not until later years that I realized how saturated the average person's life is. I was born into a society raped over and over again by the relentless barrage of information being pumped into our every orifice. Cell phones quickly pushed our need to be connected to a constant 24 hours a day 7 days a week status. Our day has been split up so much that we actually have a need to abbreviate 3 and 4 letter words.

Today, I found myself checking the news on three different sites, texting someone, and having two simultaneous conversations over AIM. All of this was going on in the background while I was studying for a midterm. Our minds have become accustomed to constant stimulation. Thought, reflection, meditation, and relaxation are terms that died with my parent's generation.

We are a generation of constant change, instant gratification, short term memory, skewed priorities, and selfishness that our parents and grandparents could not even fathom.

So why are our tempers so short? Why do we ignore terrible things happening to others? Because we're too preoccupied with ourselves, we're expecting a phone call, expecting a text, our time has been so carefully divided that we do not have any left to think about what we are doing. If you sit down and analyze your typical day, you quickly realize that you're pissing away most of your life.

We are pacifying ourselves, being blind to the fact that we carry the responsibility for change.

Ask yourself why you believe and act the way you do. Talk to other people and find out what they think and believe. While people in our society still have the capacity to think, go out and stimulate that one thing that separates us from other animals.