Signs of The Time

The Signs of the Times

As I read the news paper and watch the news my mind begins to question the world in which I live in. There are people killing people everyday, parents are killing their children starting from infancy, the toddler years, through pre-teens and teens. Spouses are killing one another, and family members are taking one another lives as if there was no love shared between them at all. The economy is bad, it is not even safe to send our children to school anymore because the students are taking the lives of their fellow peers and the educators who teach them. I have one question…How did we get here?
How did we become a nation of such hate and disgust with one another that it has become a natural and easy thing to take the life of someone else? The world has become a “Ball of Confusion”. The well known temptations wrote that song many years ago. As I listen to the words of the song which speaks of people judging one another based on the color of their skin, and the sale of drug and pills being at an all time high, people walking around with their head to the sky unwilling to help anyone who are worst off than them. Those lyrics do not touch the mere surface of what is happening in the world today. The religious faith of people in our world is fading, the once optimistic outlook on life has now become one of sever pessimism.
What happened? Why has the world in which we live become a world of selfishness, deceitfulness, and greed? Why is that I had to lose a dear friend to suicide leaving behind her two children to be motherless to forever mourn for her? Why has it become so easy to blame our first African American President who is fighting for the right of the American people by trying to fix our economy of today’s woes? It has become a “natural” thing in our world to cheat, beat, and to do wrong. No one is holding anyone accountable for their wrong doings; instead everyone is pointing the finger playing the blame game.
The news has become a depressant for me, times has changed from long ago. Gone are the days when we could make a quick run to the corner store and leave the doors to our homes unlocked, now when we return from the store someone is in our home waiting to kill us or rob us, gone are the days when we use to could sit on our porches at night with our neighbors and talk as we monitor our children frolicking together in the front yard, now we risk the chance of being gunned down. Gone are the days when we could ask our neighbors to watch our little boy or little girl while we are at work, now our neighbors are raping our little boys and little girls. “Ball of Confusion”
I use to love to watch the news to keep up with what is happening in the world I live in; I now watch it just to see how bad things have become. Just when I thought it could not get any worst someone has done something that has become the ultimate crime. The politicians of our nation are thieves robbing the American people of their bank accounts and most valuable assets causing them to lose their homes and life savings. Where has this greed come from? It is a constant fight for me not to adapt to the ways of evil where as it appears to be easy for others to do what the Nike slogan say’s ...“Just do it”. Emotions run high and no one wants to take a time out to cool off, everyone wants revenge to achieve a momentary solution to their life long problems. Police brutality is high because they too are tired of seeing their fellow brother’s fall in the line of duty at the hands of a person who felt life has dealt him a bad hand. It never ends, it never stops hatred and deceit spreads like a cancer and no one is able to cope therefore “hurt people”… hurt people. I often wonder what happens to make someone do brutal things to others. My answer comes easy…LIFE my friend took her life because the expectations she had for her life somehow took a wrong turn.
My friend saw no way out; she did not take the time to think about her two children and how the impact of her action would affect them. She was going through a divorce and she was hurt knowing that she devoted twenty plus years to a man and bored his children and he wanted out of the marriage. She forgot that there are other men of this world who would have loved her and adored her and that she could have had a second chance at love. She failed to remember that she has friends and family who loved her and who would encourage her and see her through the pain. I see the news and I see families living in cramped motel rooms, husbands killing their wives and marriages busting up because the economy has taken its toll and has pushed their love to the limit.
These are the sign of the times; so the next time I think that I got it bad, all I have to do is turn on CNN, or simply look to my left, then look to my right, I will find that there are others who are worst off than I am. So my advice to you is to do what I plan to do, simply… just look ahead and move forward.