The World Chants: 'Yes We Can'

Arifeen Rahman , 9th Grade
San Jose CA
Saint Francis High School

Change has never been a foreign concept to me. Since I was little, languages would swerve in an out of my tongue, combining, intertwining, and creating words and phrases even my parents had never heard of. Traditions would meld into a delightful potpourri. Eid was celebrated alongside Thanksgiving at my home; the turkey held it place of honor right next to haphazardly stacked boxes of prized sweets. Change has always been fluid to me, an evolving force of silent renewal and growth. But now, change is different. It is revolutionary, quick, abrupt, empowering - shattering. I watched President Obama’s election with fervor and the economy’s death sentence with horror. The world is now amplified - each word ricocheting of walls of steel, each action spreading ripples across vast lakes of still water.

We live in a rare world today, tangled in a web of connections where information can travel from one end of the earth to another in a second. Yet, in many ways we are still so disconnected from one another. In today’s world we seem to have forgotten our rare gift of empathy, instead lapsing into an apathetic state of thoughtless indifference. If I could change but one thing in this world, I would remove apathy from the human mindset.

The human ability to so strongly empathize with one another is distinctly ours – it is a gift to be treasured, and used to the utmost of our ability. Reverting to apathy means losing our humanity in the process. Our apathetic mindset is the largest barrier to solving the world’s problems. Poverty and the environment are two issues that apathy has caused to spiral deeper into ruin.

The images of Dhaka, Bangladesh are vividly pressed into my mind from my visits as a child. The blaring of car horns mesh with the steady of rise of exhaust from cars. Little scooters running on natural gas zip past tiny cars running on mixed gasoline and diesel. Ragged faces of young children peer in through car windows, begging for money. Not a single face turns to acknowledge them as they pass by.

The people are sedated, numbed by the everyday occurrence of such pain and suffering, that it no longer means anything to them. They are numbed by apathy. It is firmly in my belief that such horrors should no longer be mindlessly accepted. Every child deserves a home and an education. The upper and middle class must empathize with the less fortunate.

At the same time, apathy plagues the western world just as equally, if not more than the developing world. Landfills store plastic, waste, and garbage in pits of land. Excess almost literally defines our culture. Nothing can be reused more than once before being thrown away. Consumed with greed, companies obsess about short-term profit, forsaking the environment in the process.

In contrast, necessity has forced the developing world to reach environmental sustainability. Poverty has driven the poorest of these nations to become the greatest recyclers. In Dhaka, nothing is wasted. Plastic is a rare substance. Bottles are collected. Tin cans are crushed and reused. Piles of newspaper constantly renew themselves new copies. Plastic bags have been banned to protect sewage pipes from clogging during flood season. Their empathy and depth of connection with the earth’s resources has created a practical method of preserving the environment.

Many deny me my dream. They proclaim that changing an idea so abstract is impossible. This unknown substance, apathy, cannot be engineered and exchanged with a shiny replacement hot from the factory. However, the war on apathy can be fought on several levels, from local to global. I fight in the war against apathy every shift I volunteer at Agnews Developmental Center and El Camino Hospital. Every shift I complete brings me one step closer to understanding these new worlds.

As an Asian-American, change has always been fluid for me. I have never lived in one world, but a mixture of two seamlessly spun together. This is the world that I wish to show people. The true method to combating apathy is to open our eyes and to embrace a true connection of East and West, rich and poor, realizing the breadth of diversity that surrounds us. The true method is forming an interconnected realm, open to learning from one another.

In the future I see myself as a writer, a novelist, or a playwright. I believe that the power of the pen can completely transform the world. Real change is brought through words, pen on paper, that affect people so much more deeply – a connection on a deeper level than thoughts or looks.

The secret to defeating apathy is embracing change itself as a progressive force to better humanity. In hope, I move forward.

Utopia

Chelsey Chen, 7th Grade
Albany CA
Albany Middle School

ESCALATION

Minkee Sohn, 8th Grade
San Francisco CA
The Nueva School

Do things faster. Everything’s going fast; if you slip, you’ll fall behind forever. You have to do more after-school activities, too. If you don’t get enough skills in multiple areas, you’re not going to succeed, you know. And if you don’t succeed, it’s the end of your world. A good high school leads to a good college, which leads to a good job, which leads to success, which leads to happiness. Doing homework is never enough to get to the top. You’ve got to do more, work harder. You’re just not good enough.

Sadly enough, these messages have been drilled into me and legions of other teenagers many times, embedded in our minds. Before I go on, I’d just like to say that I’m not targeting my parents when I say this. I’m referring to what society is putting upon us. Aided by globalization and breakthroughs in technology, the world is advancing at a fast pace. And it’s hard to keep up.

Well, to keep up with it and be a healthy teenager, that is.

And that leads to the thing that I would change about this world: If I could change something in this world to make it a better place, I would make it lighten up. As a society, we are growing much too competitive. I see examples all around me, and I’ll write just one of them here. My school hosted a student overnight last year for a novel-writing unit, and it just so happened that that was the day our parents received our SSAT scores. I had no idea that this even happened, so I was surprised when I heard some of my classmates discussing how well they did while we were eating pizza. I remember that one of my friends went outside to call his parents to find out what he got. When he came back, he was distracted and upset for the majority of the time we were given to work. Knowing how hard-working he usually is, he accomplished much less work than I know he easily and definitely could have.

And so questions arise. I can see SSAT scores are significant towards high school. But should going to high school, a continuation of our learning, really be such a stressful process? Are we going to succeed in learning if we’re tense and tired all the time from trying to stay on top? And what about socializing? Students are also supposed to make friends. But if we’re so busy working and don’t have the energy or drive required to build up good ties, isn’t that going to leave us missing something emotionally at graduation?

I’m not trying to dismiss competition as a horrible thing that is eating up students’ lives. Competition is healthy and we all need it. It’s the element that pushes us forward. Actually, competition can be thought of as a way we motivate each other. But at the same time, too much competition can be that “horrible thing.” Too much competition makes us lose self-confidence, feel inadequate, and slowly grow to resent ourselves for not “being good enough.”

While this kind of harsh environment and mindset springs up across most urbanized communities like the Bay Area, I have seen it especially prevalent in Asian and Asian-American families. Being Korean-American, I am familiar with the Asian cultural traits around me. I believe that we Asians are usually unified in sharing some traits, and one that we should be particularly proud of is diligence. I have seen many hard-working Asian-American families, and diligence should be valued. But another very important thing that we should be taking into consideration is balance. Most people are healthiest and happiest under a good balance of work and play, and we should accept it. The amounts needed of these elements changes from person to person, but we all need both in our lives.

A fast-paced, unbending society is something that forms through people’s wants, making it difficult, even for a community working together, to make a significant change. So my idea isn’t really one that can be realistically put in place. But a teenager can dream, can’t he? Societies usually change over time, and I believe that it’ll be when society grows too fast for comfort that we’ll start to slow down to a healthy pace of progress. But for now, in the real world, I think that it’s very plausible and beneficial to relax and slow down just a bit. Deep breaths, enjoying a fruit, saying hello to classmates, sharing things, sleeping a little more... things like that can really make a day, ease stress, and make people happier in general. And if even one person is happier than usual, things are more likely to go right in our world.

Learn from Each Other

Serena Ying , 2nd Grade
Saratoga CA
Argonaut Elementary School