Our Nation's Priorities

When we look all around ourselves in this country, we see groups of people and communities that we don't always belong to. That's the beauty of diversity. When we read and hear certain opinions of different people, we sometimes feel that we can never agree with the ideas they value. When we look to our friends, we wonder why they act the way they do and say things they do. That's the one thing about our society that makes it so unique; we have groups of people from all avenues of life, all levels of education and backgrounds. We are in the struggle of finding ourselves. We know who we are as individuals, we know who we are as racial groups... but do we know who we are as a people? One might say, "We're Americans". While that might be true, the struggle in our quest for a universal identity is that we have in our minds this idea that the label 'American' means one entity; we're not one single entity and we're not one united people with one uniform set of values and principles. To some, family is the overlying number one valuable thing in their lives; to others, it might be their educations or their careers. Each of these things encompasses its own set of things to maintain and with different people holding different priorities, there is much to be debated over. A $1,000,000 dollar grant to a poor rural town is not at the first thing many people think about. Likewise, violence in the urban communities isn't something many people would initially want to address head on. These issues which affect the most isolated groups of people are the ones which aren't thoroughly discussed in all areas of the nation. We seldomly read or hear the stories about the other side's struggle. In our country, we give too much power to the phrase 'Out of sight, out of mind'. We know that which we can see and that with which we're familiar. Who you know that starved today in America? Who do you know that got evicted today? in America? Who have you talked to today that has more than enough intelligence to succeed in college but can't because they can't afford it? These are injustices to those in society. Anytime you succeed, anytime you do well, anytime you achieve an aspiration; know that there is always someone who less fortunate than yourself. What if it was you?