*This is going to be a post about death. Beware. (Good timing with Halloween, right?)
I have a few mentors who help me in my character building and faith strengthening quest as a teenager, and today we talked about how we ignore death, how we ignore its existence and its reality. But despite our ignorance and our disbelief in its immediacy, every single person is equally close to death in spite of zer conditions.
I am sitting here in front of a laptop in probably the most protected state in the US; the house doors are locked; my parents are home; and I have access to an emergency line through my phone. I am 16, and with the current life expectancy rate in the US, I have about 62 more years to live and prosper. I ride the bus every morning to school, avoiding a significant amount of car-related accidents, and my house is in a fairly secure neighborhood. I have a healthy diet and I exercise moderately everyday.
A girl on the other side of the world. A civilian in Syria, caught between war and hostility. She wakes up to gunshots and sleeps with helicopter engines. Her parents decide to become refugees and escape to another country. She travels through battlefields and tries to cross city borders. She runs from kidnappers, and she runs from rebel forces. She maneuvers around bullets and dances through landmines.
But we are not different. Not at all. I might die right this moment, before I publish this post. I might die from an unusual death like vinegar poisoning or something more common like a heart-attack. My bookshelf might topple over and break my neck, or I might fall while getting out of my chair and hit my head on the corner edge of my wall. She might die too, before I publish this post. She might not be able to run as fast as she had to, or she might get trapped under a collapsed building.
We look different. We belong to different places. We have different cultures and customs. But let's think together, because, really, we are in equal proximity to to our deaths, and that is eye-opening.
Lots of bears,
~Belle
I have a few mentors who help me in my character building and faith strengthening quest as a teenager, and today we talked about how we ignore death, how we ignore its existence and its reality. But despite our ignorance and our disbelief in its immediacy, every single person is equally close to death in spite of zer conditions.
I am sitting here in front of a laptop in probably the most protected state in the US; the house doors are locked; my parents are home; and I have access to an emergency line through my phone. I am 16, and with the current life expectancy rate in the US, I have about 62 more years to live and prosper. I ride the bus every morning to school, avoiding a significant amount of car-related accidents, and my house is in a fairly secure neighborhood. I have a healthy diet and I exercise moderately everyday.
A girl on the other side of the world. A civilian in Syria, caught between war and hostility. She wakes up to gunshots and sleeps with helicopter engines. Her parents decide to become refugees and escape to another country. She travels through battlefields and tries to cross city borders. She runs from kidnappers, and she runs from rebel forces. She maneuvers around bullets and dances through landmines.
But we are not different. Not at all. I might die right this moment, before I publish this post. I might die from an unusual death like vinegar poisoning or something more common like a heart-attack. My bookshelf might topple over and break my neck, or I might fall while getting out of my chair and hit my head on the corner edge of my wall. She might die too, before I publish this post. She might not be able to run as fast as she had to, or she might get trapped under a collapsed building.
We look different. We belong to different places. We have different cultures and customs. But let's think together, because, really, we are in equal proximity to to our deaths, and that is eye-opening.
Lots of bears,
~Belle