text: Waking up that morning, everything was right in the world. The birds were chirping, sunrays shining through the wooden blinds, illuminating each and every dust particle floating in the bedroom air. It was a beautiful day, and it was a Saturday. What more could you ask for. Everything was normal. Everything always seemed normal. The distinctive smell of bacon and eggs wafted through the house, as it does every Saturday morning. Everything within my personal bubble was in its place; normal. Everything was safe. There was order to my world. I had always thought that things were the way they were for a reason. Not to say that there is definitively a god, but a higher power of consciousness, which maintained this order. I walked into the kitchen after lying in bed for about 15 minutes. I can’t start the day right when I wake up, my brain almost has to “boot up” first. I walked into the kitchen to greet my mom. “Good morning!” she exclaimed as she heartily flipped a pancake into the air with her spatula, to which I groggily replied, “...Morning” and continued to walk over to my brew my routine morning coffee. I’ve never been a morning person. I consider coffee to be essential to the impending progress and productivity of my day. I lackadaisically waddled over to the counter, still in my pajamas, and prepared myself a plate of food buffet style. I sat down at the table to begin eating, unaware of my surrounding as I am engulfed in my steaming plate. Once my initial hunger subsides, I realize that my food looks extraordinarily aesthetically pleasing. Being in the age of digital media, I decided to snap a picture to preserve this work of art on my plate before I began to lack the restraint to wait a minute longer to eat my masterpiece. I snapped a few quality angles. Suddenly, before I save it, I could feel the grasp of my phone slipping from my bacon grease ridden fingers. It was too late. In what felt like eternity, I watched my iPhone fall to its demise. I reacted out of impulse, and although I’m not proud of it in the aftermath, my immediate reaction was anger, as if the iPhone had suddenly developed a conscious and betrayed me. I responded as if this was a life-altering event. As if this inanimate object really meant anything. In the moment, I was enraged. Not at myself, for something that was clearly my fault, but at this conundrum we call life. “It just isn’t fair!” I screamed, inciting my two dogs to bark along in my frantic commotion. “I just got this phone, life isn’t fair, oh my god!” “Oh boy have you got a shock coming to you” I heard my mom mutter from the corner of the room. As I began to pick up the shards of glass from the surface of my phone, I glanced at that week’s Washington Post of September 3rd, 2015. The front-page title read, “How desperation left a 3 year-old boy washed up on a Turkish beach”. I hesitated. I read it again; “3 year-old boy washed up on a Turkish beach”. “Everything is not all right.” , I spoke faintly to myself. I set down my phone, as my attention rapidly shifted at the same moment when my realm of influence expanded tenfold. No longer was my immediate world my house, my city, my state or even country. No longer was I concerned about the useless device. For all I cared, I could have had a twig and some leaves and I could be satisfied. Anything to rid that headline out of my memory. “Only three years old” I suddenly murmured to my mom. “What?” “This young boy, a Syrian refugee, literally washing ashore.... like a piece of trash.” Even she was taken back. “Meanwhile, we live luxuriously; even too frivolously. It’s not fair.” I said. My side of the argument had switched. “We have access abundantly gross amounts of food everywhere we turn, our society is ridden with ignorance and stupidity, and we’re more concerned about the screens on our phones than the people around us and what they have to say and think.” I explained to my mom, as we began to hash out these troubles. It was in this moment when I had first began to question everything I had once considered “normal” My bubble had bursted, and my eyes shed light on the dark side of the moon. I was aware of everything I had overlooked previously. “Why is nobody concerned with this? Well I’m sure they’re concerned, but why are we doing nothing? Is there even anything we can do?” I began to question, getting more and more anxious with each query. “We are doing something, well, the government.” “So not very much” I sarcastically remarked. She laughed, “Pretty much, son. The same way we’re dealing with the gun problem, or the healthcare system, or terrorism.” “It shouldn’t be like this, I thought everything was alright” “It seems like it doesn’t it?” my mom responded, as I prepared for her daily dose of motherly teaching. “ “We overlook these problems because of the same way how we consider everything to be alright in this country. We have become accustomed to the chaos. We are desensitized to that which is routine. To that which is “normal” I nodded in agreement, unable to find the words to respond. “We consider atrocity routine in countries like Syria, or the middle east. And we blindly turn the other cheek, pretending our luxurious and lavish, for lack of a better work; greedy lifestyle is something to be praised like the invention of sliced bread.” “Will we ever see change? “I hesitantly asked, somewhat preparing myself for the answer I already know.” “Keep your ear to the ground, John. Good things will come.” “But how do you know?” I asked? “I don’t, none of us do, but that’s the definition of faith. Believing in something when all other evidence says the contrary, when all else is lost. It is up to people like you John.” “People like what?” I responded. “People who care.