We...

Just because society glorifies doing things in a wholly irresponsible, instantly gratifying, and inherently unstable and inadequate manner does not mean that a legitimate and responsible manner of action no longer exists. It does. It's just easier to "go with the flow" rather than hold ourselves to any sort of moral, spiritual, or ethical code. It's easier to tell yourself, "There are no rules" because then you can absolve yourself of any guilt. It's easier to excuse yourself by saying "Everyone does it" or "No one does that anymore." Instead of measuring ourselves by the standards of our morality, spirituality, and/or ethics, we measure ourselves by the society's overwhelming lack of those standards. As a result, our standards are hacked away until there is nothing left, until there is no distinction between right and wrong, until "It is what it is," at which time, we feel slighted, we feel betrayed, we feel lost, we feel hurt, we feel wronged. But, because we failed to take a personal stand for whatever we may believe, and because we allowed all baseline standards to be devolved so that we could fit in with whatever "everyone else is doing," we find ourselves without a reference point to define our offense. We have allowed ourselves, and our children, to become morally and ethically fat and lazy by suckling from the breasts of "Whatever I Want" and "Whatever Is Quick And Easy." We have trashed and done away with the notion of "What am I going to do to make this world better?" and replaced it with "What is the world going to give me?" We fill our bellies with junk, don't exercise, and blame the restaurant for making us fat. We have illicit and meaningless sex with multiple men and women, "because we can," and blame the world for our low self-esteem and broken hearts. We indulge ourselves to excess with everything we can, and then when we have nothing to show for our lives, we blame God or Life or Fate for not giving us enough opportunities. We enter into relationships, impassioned and over emotional, without taking the requisite time to actually get to know the person, only to find out the hard way that we were wrong, and then we blame them. We jump into relationships because we crave the security, affection, comfort, and attention, and we settle for those external balms without taking time to get to know who the other person really is. We get our hearts broken and we tell ourselves, "They just changed," or "That came out of nowhere." We absolve ourselves of any responsibility for any of our actions. We spend so much time and effort making excuses for ourselves and lying to ourselves and making ourselves the victim that we eventually miss out on the blessings that God or Life or Fate had prepared for us. We are always chasing something, a bigger paycheck, a nicer car, a prettier girl, a more handsome man, more fame, more-more-more. We take and take and take, but when life or our environment requires something of us, we deny it and sit idly by, waiting for someone else to do it, to give it, to be it. We want the change, but we refuse to do the work required to get it. We want the opportunities, but we refuse to go out in search of them. We pass our lives in front of computer screens, living in virtual worlds, playing fantasy games, because in a digital universe, we can take without having to wait, or work, or give. We waste the time we have in the real world living in fake ones. Video games didn't make kids violent, we did, because we glorified violence. Fast food didn't make us fat, we did, because we bought it. The media doesn't poison our minds, we do, because we listen to it. The opposite (or same) sex didn't make us jaded and untrusting, we did, because we jumped from person to person and relationship to relationship out of lust and selfishness instead of a true desire to share our lives with someone. Racism and slavery didn't put my black brothers and sisters in the situations we find ourselves today, we did, because we refused to let go of the feelings of entitlement and recompense for things that happened hundreds of years before we were born. Gays didn't destroy marriage, we did, because we took our oaths for granted, we turned marriage into a movie rental store where we can try it out, return it, and pick another one. We found it easier and quicker to simply divorce than to own up to our mistakes, improve ourselves, and work things out like adults. Our parents didn't fail us, we did, because instead of learning from their mistakes, we just made the same ones. We blame the "downfall of society" on this and that, when in reality, we ARE society, we ARE our own downfall. WE failed ourselves, we failed our ancestors, we failed our children. A blacksmith bends iron to his will with fire, muscle, and tools. If he needs a tool, he forges it. We have stopped forging our tools. We have stopped stoking the fire. We have stopped bending the iron to our will. We sit, before a cold furnace, with no tools, blaming the universe for not bending the iron for us. But, the day is not yet done. Our days are not meant to make the wold better for us, rather, they are to make the world better for our children. We give our children the foundation upon which they will build their world, their lives. We teach our children how to use the furnace, give them our tools, so they may use them to make better tools and stronger metal. Our children will either stoke the fires we put out and use the tools they have forged, or they will continue to wonder why the iron is not bent.

Wake Up!!!
Nevermore-Actual