Evening News

I asked my mom a question over dinner just now about the scenario of the world when she was a teenager. I asked her if there was any news about war and people in despair on the news every single day when she watched the evening news with her father last time. She told me that there was hardly any news about war and stuff like that.

The reason I asked her that was because the evening news was on the TV and at every interval of 5 minutes, there would definitely be news about countries declaring amnesty because of the some unstable politic environment (not that I want to go that way), a dominant white country attacking a defenceless country or news about the death of hundreds of people because of the lack of nutrition.

The truth is; it is not an anomaly to hear about all these news nowadays. In fact, it will be strange if you don’t hear any news about people getting killed by some mass weapon of destruction on the evening news. The so-called ‘bad news’ had blend in with the every day content of the evening news. It is sort of like mandatory to have all these news over the evening news.

It really breaks my heart that this kind of thing would happen in the world that we live in today. I mean our ancestors build what that there is on this world today. And here we are doing the very opposite; we destruct what that there is. We destruct bonds, racial integrations and the democracy that we have today. The bottom line is that we destroy the peace that those before us had tried so hard to build.

As a teenager, I am sure there is a little part that we can do to make a change for the better. I mean we are the voices of tomorrow, aren’t we? What’s the use of being given that title if we don’t comprehend it’s meaning? Being the voices of tomorrow means that some of us will be the one who will be in a powerful position one day. Being the voices of tomorrow mean that we are the one who will shape our own future.

We should start by realising. We should realise that just because we live in a peaceful country, that doesn’t mean that other countries out there aren’t in an unstable condition. We should start realising that while we are sitting comfortably in our room while surfing the Internet, there are other teenagers out there who are scouting for food for their mother and younger siblings.

Gratitude should be in us. I don’t think that ‘should’ would be as strong a word, gratitude must be instilled among ourselves. Sometimes we forgot that we are extremely lucky to be able to live. In fact, we sometimes whine because we can’t have the latest model of cell phone. We whine because we can’t have the so-called “bare necessities”. Little do we know that someone in some other part of the world is fighting to get to the front of the line to get food and shelter.

We should raise awareness among our peers. Start at school. Write an article for the school magazine or discuss with the teachers to hold a campaign. Start something up. It’s like what that my Form 3 English teacher would like to say, ‘Do something good for your soul’.

Bare in mind that we haven’t live in a world where there is absolutely no war and poverty. Do your part as a teenager, no matter how small it is. Do what that there is in our power to put a stop to war and poverty and all those negativity that plagued the world today. Something is always so much better than nothing. It doesn’t matter what you do and it doesn’t matter what you say; just do something good for your soul and the rest of the world today.