Current Events

Unless you've been living under a rock recently, you will probably have either seen or heard about the NSYNC reunion and Miley Cyrus's scandalous performance at the VMA's. If you've heard about neither, here's a recap:

Sunday night was the MTV music awards aka the VMA's. Last year the highlight was One Direction kissing Katy Perry and breaking their Moon-Man. This year was a bit more chaotic. First off, Justin Timberlake and his boyband NSYNC had a revival and performed their song "Bye Bye Bye" causing every NSYNC fan to go ballistic. Heck, I was too little to pay attention to NSYNC when they were big, but even I was excited.

And then there was the train wreck that was Miley Cyrus with Robin Thicke. I would show you a picture but trust me, you really don't want to see that. Let's just say it elicited reactions like this:

as well as a priceless one by Taylor Swift, who looked like she was watching Paranormal Activity. The performance basically consisted of Miley singing, twerking, and sticking her tongue out in a way that I think was supposed to be sexy but didn't really work all while half naked. And teddy bears. Lots and lots of teddy bears. *shudder*

It caused an even bigger stir than Lady GaGa in a thong.

In the midst of all this, you may not have heard about some other, much more serious things going on. It was brought to my attention by a friend on Facebook that the United States could be sending a missile strike to Syria as early as this Thursday.

Another Facebook friend posted this picture yesterday

Truth be told, I hadn't even heard that churches were being burned in Egypt, and according to an article on newsbusters.org, there's probably a reason for that. Big news stations have given it anywhere between fifteen seconds and five minutes of air time. Five minutes may seem like a lot, but not when you consider that some of these shows are two hours long. Full article here

I've seen lots of complaints on Facebook about how Miley's dancing is getting more attention than serious political issues, and while I agree with their opinions, I think there are definite reasons for what we care about and what we seem to ignore.

Firstly: What is it that we see all the time? We see celebrities and gossip and who has the "best beach bod." That's what the media feeds us because that is what is entertaining and when they don't, we turn off the tv because we don't want to hear about all the bad things going on in the world. Yesterday I was watching an episode of the show The West Wing where there were all sorts of crises going on and all the reporters cared about was what the First Lady was going to wear to a state dinner. And this show came out in 1999, so obviously times haven't changed that much.

Secondly: We don't want to hear it. That's a huge part of the issue, I think. We ignore it because it's sad or hard to understand and we just don't want to think about it if it doesn't affect us directly. We want to be blissfully ignorant.

Thirdly: Maybe this is just me, but I never actually hear about big issues until people get mad that no one is focusing on them. And then they get angry because there are serious things going on in the world and all we care about is, for instance, how excited we are about NSYNC or how disturbed we are by Miley Cyrus. But at the same time, there are always bad things happening in the world and it's impossible to focus on all of them and it's so much easier to talk about celebrities.

Anyway, I don't think I gave many solid answers in this post but I just needed to talk about it. Because I feel personally that I am not ignoring the fact that churches are being burned. It actually concerns me quite a bit. The problem is that I didn't hear about it. And that is a big problem.

Anyway, I need to start my homework. I've procrastinated long enough.
Lisa

P.S. If you are on of those people from Facebook that I mentioned, I'm not attacking you. Actually if it weren't for you I wouldn't know about this so really I'm thanking you.

Growin' Up and Learnin' Stuff

This post is kind of in two parts because I have a couple things to say and I'm too lazy to write two separate posts when hey, I can just combine them. 

So yesterday was the very first day of my senior year and today I sent in my first college application which scares me a little bit. I don't feel old enough for this at all. I feel like all my life, or at least as long as I've been in school, I've been looking forward to this point of my life. Graduating high school, going to college. And now that it's almost here, I'm having a hard time believing it. It's hard for me to imagine what life outside of school is like. Obviously I still have a ways to go before I find out because college involves quite a bit of school work, so I'm told. But it's getting closer and closer and I still can't imagine what it's like. 

This whole growing up thing leads me to part two, which is the learning stuff. And not like school stuff. 

There's this woman who I've seen a couple times at work and for not really good reasons, I've just judged her fairly harshly, and almost involuntarily. She's probably in her 40's or 50's, but she looks older than that. She is fairly tan with lots of freckles and she's thin to an extreme. Her hair is almost completely gray and she has a slightly gravely voice. From the first time I saw her I thought she seemed like the type of person who has been smoking for way too long, and I was pleasant when I served her, but I never made an effort to talk to her. 

Today this woman came in with her daughter. At first I didn't notice anything unusual about her. I vaguely noticed that she was pretty before going about my normal work. On walking past again, I noticed that she had a lazy eye, which didn't bother me all that much. While my coworker served them, I cut up a doughnut for samples and listened to them talk. The girl started telling he mom how she couldn't read out menu board, but she could see the lit up sign above it. It was not long after that I saw they had a service dog with them, and I realized that this girl must be legally blind. 

It was after this realization that I started to pay more attention to her mom. When she talked to her daughter, I could see the worry and the stress she felt and the love she had for her daughter. The girl must have been about my age, and I wondered how long her mom had watched her lose her sight, or if she hadn't had it well from the beginning. I thought about how hard that must have been for her mom to watch. And I suddenly felt horribly sorry for all the labels I had put on her in the two short times I'd seen her before. 

I seem to be constantly realizing recently that everyone has a life that's just as intricate and hard and personal as mine is. And yet every time it comes as a shock to me. You'd think I would get the point by now. And further than that, I realized that God loves me so much. People have told me that since I was born. But I suddenly remembered that God loves that woman the exact same ridiculous amount that everyone has always said he loves me. And to think that it's the same for every single person out of the billions of people on this planet just blows my mind. 

So that's what I've been thinking about lately. I hope something bothers you this week as much as my selfishness bothers me. Because when something about yourself bothers you, that's when you really start to change, I think. 

Off to beddy-bye land now so I can get up for school again tomorrow. 

Love you beautiful humans!

Lisa