Chances.

From the thoughts of Romer Jed:

I looked out of my car window with my head pressed against the glass, I could feel the cold seeping in slowly through as I stared out at the bleak landscape of 440. We are stopped at the usual U-turn and I could see a homeless man holding a cup and asking for money. My first thought was not about money or the criticism of the man, but the reply of others. I had a chance to give this man a dollar, to give him a chance to get a warm cup of coffee, and maybe a chance to get back on his feet. I had but a moment to make a choice that could have decided his immediate future, yet I didn’t do anything. I just drove away.

We grow up to be wiser, or at least that is what we believe. We automatically assume that a homeless man is a drug addict, we automatically infer that other parents don’t know how to raise their kids when they don’t agree with our ideals, and we automatically agree with ourselves that a situation may be hopeless when we didn’t even try to begin with. We learn to grasp our limits, as well as others, in a split-second. We condition ourselves not to give this situation a second chance to reprimand itself and prove to us that this time it may be different.

As teenagers, we are in the middle of the conflict of losing our childhood purity to the “truth” that the world seems to display. We are losing that previous innocence of asking a person’s name before judging him or her. We are losing the ability to smile at a stranger for no apparent reason, but for the sake of being nice. And the sad truth is, most of the time, people lose themselves to the general rush of the crowd as it pushes toward adult-hood.

The chance for us to retain a sense of self, the chance for us to continue holding that outstretched arm out of goodness, and the chance for us to hold on to that less judgmental  form of knowing a person before we ask that person’s name is slipping away. This rant comes as a reminder that we must either hold on or let go, because their is certainly no middle ground. And once you let go, the slope is quite slippery and coming back up might just end with you falling even faster than before.

Chance. Just by chance, you happen to retain that innocence towards the world, please don’t ever let it hold you down. The world is cruel, but kindness is stronger.

- Romer Jed.
P.S. Where are the other posters?