Inspiration vs. Hopelessness

Is it just me, or does the thought of "making a difference" give you simultaneous feelings of inspiration and hopelessness?  I'm not trying to start out sounding pessimistic and negative, I truly just struggle with this on a daily basis.  And since I'm graduating in December, I'm literally asking myself everyday, "Am I on the right path?" There are so many things I believe we as a culture (and generation) should be working toward: establishing animal rights, reassembling the child welfare system, truly realizing what we are doing to this planet and figuring out monumental ways to repair what those before us have destroyed, and so on.  Yet when one's mentality begins to shift away from what we have been culturally conditioned to strive for: 9-5 job, paying bills, buying a big house and nice cars, traveling with no purpose other than posting a picture on Instagram, etc. there is an incredible feeling of despair that comes with it.  Your thoughts go from "I want this so I can (appear to) be happy" to "I need to do this so others can have a fighting chance" and along with that comes this madness, an ache to repair that which is broken, and along with that comes that nagging voice, AKA the ego, telling you that you are only one person, you can't do it, no one will listen, no one really cares and if they do where are those people???

Have you ever noticed that if you post a selfie or a dish of food you get WAY more likes/comments than if you post an article about the horror of animal agriculture or an environmental issue that actually DESERVES attention?  Why are we so afraid to face reality?  Why are we so hesitant to take a stand?I get it (to an extent), tt's hard.  And scary. No one wants to believe these things are happening but does that make them any less real?  What happens when the damage is so severe that it is impossible to ignore and maybe even impossible to fix?

But what happens when people achieve a higher level of awareness?  What happens when we distance ourselves from television, radio, social media (AKA: brainwashing tools!) and immerse ourselves in reality, education, community, actual person-to-person social networking, and passion?  CHANGE.  Things change!  Or they can, if enough people wake up from our culture's consumerism-fueled dream.  WE HAVE SO MUCH POWER.

The film we watched in class gave me some of these feelings--"Wow, our country is in such disrepair" vs. "It is up to us to try and fix this!"

So far this class has been super inspirational.  K. Stone has been super inspirational.  YOU GUYS have been super inspirational.

<3