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Kids Speaking Up: Welcome to the Future
It is the fate of those who organize time in arbitrary segments such as years to arbitrarily believe that the next year will be a significant change from the last. But, to be honest, 2008 was a big year.
America’s government is set for a change in policy and other areas, and things will be different. Research is being made, discoveries discovered. Musicians or the TV shows sponsoring them will scale the pop charts to reach the level of stardom they so desperately hope to contact, or will be pushed down by the treachery of former friends and allies.
So, where is our future? Are we doomed to have the image of the world in 10 years’ time be overrated in nine? Are we to remember Britney Spears and Katy Perry as “the good old days” and complain to our grandchildren how we had only iPods and YouTube growing up? Will jetpacks and silver jumpsuits still be as much of a pathetic vision of the Utopian future 150 years from now as they were 50 years ago?
We are progressing, but where are we going? Will my generation of the turn-of-the-new-century children grow to be hopeless “nostalgics” of the MySpace era, and wait for the future of a better world?
No. Because we can’t wait for a better world. We can’t wait for a better future.
Are you going to make any New Year’s resolutions? Don’t. Start them now, because there is no present. There is only future and past. If we don’t plan for the future, we end up only in the past.
So, hello, 2009. Welcome to the future.
Dos Pueblos High School freshman Nik Pearson is a member of Kids Speaking Up, a local group working to educate youth on social, national and political issues and inspire them to write.
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» on 12.28.08 @ 08:24 AM
Dear Nik,
Ram Dass would take umbrage with your “there is no present” statement; his iconic book is entitled “Be Here Now.”
Joan Esposito’s Dyslexia Awareness Resource Center uses one version of an ancient saying: “Action without a vision is chaos; vision without action is a dream. Action with vision is The Way to a World of Peace, Health, Happiness, and Success.”
I applaud Kids Speaking Up and hope there is a movement to form a chapter in each school.
Social change comes from not only knowing what’s wrong but in knowing what’s right and how to start—-in the present—-moving to where you want to be in the future.
When Alice in Wonderland asked the Cheshire Cat “Which way?” he replied, “That all depends on where you’re going—-and if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably not going to get there.”
Please speak up on http://www.sbschooltalk.ning.com!
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