Lesson #2

I believe that the problem with us as a population is that we try to live our lives too independently. Thoreau said in his piece, " You must live your life within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs." I personally could not disagree with this statement more. I think part of the problem with humans is that we don't work with each other well. We all have our own altercations with the world, but we don't use each other like we should be. The reason that more than one person exists on this earth is because we are supposed to live in harmony with each other. Think about a single raindrop, by itself it is almost useless and has no real purpose. It is when raindrops form together that they create amazing things. Each raindrop blends together to form puddles, creeks, rivers and lakes. This is how we should be as a population, if we put aside our differences we all have similar intentions. We as humans are not taking advantage of the fact that there are seven billion of us on this earth. Imagine the amazing things we could create if we were to put seven billion brains together; the possibilities are endless. In the poem "The History Teacher" Billy Collins says, "Trying to protect his students' innocence," the reason that he felt that he had to protect his students is because the world is seen as a cruel place. Yet it is not the world that is cruel at all, it is us people who live with the attitude that what we want is the most important thing. We can all have our own opinions and our own lives while working together. We all feel like we are fighting against the odds, But what would happen if we all supported each other? When we fall we should have seven billion people waiting to help us back up. It is not the strength in numbers, it is the strength in unity. A world that works together would be an amazing place to live. If we were all able to be supportive and open-minded with each other, then war would end. At some point we have to understand that if we don't want to have to "protect kids from the truth," then we need to change the way our world works. Our world should be the type of place where we can look at our children and tell them the whole truth, and once we can do that we will know that we are headed in the right direction.
Lesson #2: We should be the change we want to see in the world.