desertDJ’s Halo Halo

Well as I’m sitting in my marketing research class board out my mind, I thought this would be a good time to post a blog which will probably look like a bunch of rambling but oh well, it will eventually have a point so stick with it!

You’ve all heard this before, “You all will remember where you were at when you heard about the tragedy that happened 9/11.”  So how much further have we gone on now that the American flags that you’ve seen all over have all but disappeared.  In NY, as they have a simple memorial at ground zero, many just want to move on. The only noticeable change I personally still feel after 9/11 is tighter security at airports but other than that, nothing seems different now than my life was on September 10th, 2001. 

The big thing in the news today?  Brittney Spears career is over and some High School Musical chick has her naked pics all over the internet.  9 Americans died in the military yesterday but we don’t hear too much about that.  I don’t blame the media though. 3,772 have died in this war so far so I guess you can only keep reporting this before it just kinda looses its punch in the news.

I believe today our society moves too fast.  Before we can get over the last tragedy, the media is throwing something else in our face.  Why do you think YouTube is so popular, our attention span is so short we can’t even pay attention to a 30 minute program anymore, it has to be a 2-3 minute clip.  And people wonder why kids have ADD.  (I wonder how many of you even made it this far in the blog, I bet some seen how long this was and moved on lol)

Just think, (if you believe in Creationism) that people have been on this earth for 4,000. But just in maybe the last 30-50 years, we think that we would all be better off if we eliminate free time in our lives.  When was the last time you actually has “free time”. Where you just really had nothing to do.  We cram in 18 credit hours at college, while working 30 hours a week, are involved in 3 clubs, try to catch our favorite shows on TV and wonder why we don’t have enough time.  Or what about the parents who think its great for their 7 year old kid be in soccer, swim, baseball, piano and if time school! (This may not apply to most my friends, but there is a large part of “lighter skinned” parents in the suburbs who believe this)

Yesterday at East Valley Bible Church, our pastor Tom talked about this idea of “public privacy” He used the example where he was at a Starbucks and wanted to go to the bathroom real quick and wanted the person sitting near him to watch his laptop when she said “No, I don’t want to be responsible for your laptop,” well why don’t you stay at home if you don’t want to interact with anybody?  Are we just too busy to watch the laptop for a couple minutes, or worried if we take our eye off for a second and the laptop disappears that this person will come back and sue us because we were legally liable for laptop due to the implied agreement that we would reimburse the laptop owner if it was stolen.

So, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, when most you people reading this will be in your late 30’s, early 40s, what will we be saying when we look back at 9/11, this defining moment of our generation.  Will we as a society start changing back to better morals, and look back at this time as a “dark period”.  Well we only look back and laugh that we used to carry a cell phone, palm pilot, laptop, ipod instead of the iEverything.  Well of course we all have no idea what will happen tomorrow, let alone 20 years from now, and individually we have little control over how crazy our society gets, but you can at least control yourself.  And you can at least live your life with meaning.  It may not be the “Abraham Lincoln” meaning where everyone remembers you, but you do have an impact on your friends and people you interact with everyday.  If your looking at your life and maybe thinking that you have made an impact on your friends, but its not a very good one, guess what, starting September 12th… change.  So while you pay more attention to the news and notice that we seem closer to the end of the world, that all hope is lost and your just surviving day to day. Stop. And on September 12th change your world.

PS – Don’t forget to say a prayer for the soldiers fighting, we all either have some friends and family there or know some there and they need our support.

Here are some pics from that memorial I mentioned earlier.

Originally posted: September 10th, 2007