Maria+P’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

=**First World Problems**=

When America’s founding fathers conspired to become an independent and free country, they were aware that the challenges and obstacles a fledgling nation would face would be of elephantine proportions. Little did they know that people would gradually become of elephantine proportions as well, and that as both society and humanity on the North American continent progressed and wizened with age, its constituents would be barraged with problems that no less developed countries would have the misfortune to be burdened with. These problems are the everyday pressures and hardships that people living in a privileged, democratic, first world society face. We complain about our government but live too comfortably to be motivated to do anything about it. We sleep too much on our days off so we complain about having less time to do nothing. We are too rich for financial aid, but too poor to pay for college. We become irritated when our diamond earrings keep scratching our iPhones. We have petty concerns in a world that is troubled with war, terrorism, poverty, starvation, moral degradation, and ecological destruction. And by no means are the aforementioned items the only things that plague nations across the globe. However, I am not here to advocate that every person in the room start some sort of small organization that collects stuffed animals for kids in Syria who would do better with a bag of rice. It is difficult, as well as unwise, to try to improve a place halfway across the globe when we can’t even get off the couch because we are too busy vegetating in front of the idiot box. The first problem I would like to address that I see everywhere regardless of gender, race, religion, age, or wealth, is the couch potato phenomenon. You know, the one where you spend so much time on the couch that it feels as though you have somehow become part of a whole, and if you attempt to get up you simply won’t be able to because you can’t take your eyes of the TV screen anyway? There is rarely anything particularly enlightening on the TV, and usually it is nothing that cannot be found online and without the usual brainwashing by sponsors of the program you are watching. I am especially appalled at the people who watch reality TV because I have rarely heard such idiotic conversation between people as I have on Keeping up with the Kardashians and Jersey Shore (not that I watch them or anything, God forbid). Even parents have turned to the TV as a cheap babysitter, plunking kids in front of it for all day engagement so that they don’t have to deal with fuss and the normal, sometimes noisy, development of a child. Then they wonder why any spoken sentence begins with “I want___!” in lieu of “May I..?” Perhaps that is the reason I had kids in my classes that remained mute until the second grade, and only then opened their mouths to reiterate the wise words of Patrick Star from the Sponge Bob episode they saw the night before: “I can’t see my forehead”. Of course you can’t, and maybe if you watched less crap on TV you would sound a tad smarter than a cartoon character who can’t string a complete sentence together without being distracted by one of his appendages. The rising number of children being diagnosed with ADD correlates with studies that show arrested development, poor communication skills, and aggressiveness in children who watch TV daily. And this is without any mention of video games, which are a related but separate issue that I can argue eternally (it’s best not to get me started). A country so developed and educated and innovative doesn't have any time left for its children, in other words, the future. We claim to be so invested in education and the success of generations to come, yet we continue to practically beat them over the head, seemingly in an effort to kill brain cells. We have families, yet we would rather watch other people’s lives than those we supposedly love most. The happiest people I have ever seen, with the most toothy, genuine, eye-crinkling smiles, are the ones who maybe own a coconut and a t-shirt, nothing else. Because all that they have is each other. Also a similar problem is the Smartphone. There are endless benefits to a Smartphone, I do not deny this, and I by no means wish a return to the bricks people called cell phones ten years ago. However, I absolutely cannot tolerate people sitting inches away from one another in silence because they are texting each other, checking Facebook or Instagram, or faking doing the aforementioned out of sheer boredom. Unless you have been approached by a creepy individual with questionable intentions and wish to look as though you are somehow engaged in speaking to another person as you prepare to dial 911, this is never ok. I am aware that we are all very busy people, and we are preoccupied giving the impression that we have lives on social networking sites, but it’s all fake. That’s why I am so irritated with these things. They are fake, people are fake on Facebook (anyone ever heard of the term “Facebook pretty”? When the person seems to be very good-looking in edited pictures, but in real life resembles a cross between a goblin and Michael Jackson?) and they are absolutely irrelevant five minutes from now. Five minutes, who am I kidding, thirty seconds from now, no one will care about your status. Convenient, yes they are, for connecting with people across the globe. NOT necessary to talk to the person sitting next to you. Social Networking and the ability to hide behind a screen has made us superficial people that are unable to read body language or have a conversation with someone without averting our gaze. We can do so much better, get to know each other, and learn new things if only we stopped staring at our phones. Our final societal detriment, but not the last by any means, is the misguided resignation and acceptance towards unhealthy habits. The recent statements of Abercrombie and Fitch’s CEO has caused tremendous uproar by body peace organizations, as well as the creation of a counter campaign called “Attractive and Fat” done by a photographer who dubbed her own body as such. Neither party, in my opinion, is correct. It is incorrect to say, as did the CEO of A&F, that people who are overweight are meant to be outcasted and that it is rightly so, but I also disagree that it is ok to be obese. Yes, there are different body types, but we have taken the body peace stuff a little too far. There are countless health problems that accompany obesity, and frankly, I know that these people feel miserable. Have you ever heard anyone who has lost 200 lbs say that they wished they could regain all that weight so they can feel good about themselves again? A witness to several such people, I can easily say no. My mom was a chubby kid, (and there weren't a lot of fat people in the Soviet Union) and she hated herself. She cried at dances because no boy ever wanted to dance with her, and she felt ugly in everything she wore, and I don’t believe anyone deserves to feel that way. We are all entitled to feel good and to feel healthy, but it is up to us to decide whether we are going to or not. As a nation notorious for its fast food, we emphasize body peace too much and the motivation to make healthy changes to our lifestyles too little, feeding kids McDonalds and then wondering why they weigh 200 lbs in the third grade. And this leads me to the topic of exercise. Parents who don’t make their kids do any sports are not emphasizing a very important habit while their kids are extremely impressionable and while they still can. I’m sorry, but art is not a sport, and you can at least do something active with your kids if they don’t want to sign up for anything. A girl who breaks her wrists repeatedly when she leans on them to stand up out of a chair (as a family friend of mine has) is not “delicate”; she is malnourished and weak because her parents think that sports are for people who need to lose weight. We need to emphasize health, not acceptance. A phenomenon commonly found in first world countries, since in poverty stricken nations people usually fight to keep their weight up, is the weight loss pill. Seriously? You have to take a pill to lose weight? Is there not an ounce of willpower inside of you, that you cannot just stop eating crap? If you have any self respect, you can find the will to eat healthier and exercise. Yes, it’s hard, and no, you can’t eat whatever you want, but tough shit, life is hard and you can’t just prance your way through everything. When gymnasts train for the Olympics, they can’t have sugar. Do you know how badly those people want a doughnut? Or an ice cream cone? And even then, we complain that many crispy kreme locations have closed and now we can’t eat nine doughnuts we can only scarf down three. Since when are doughnuts something to complain about? We should be grateful that we don’t have to collect the day’s water from the dew that collects on plants. On a larger, global scale, America’s problems are such that third worlders would probably roll their eyes at us. I, just like most people I know, am also guilty of whining about my life undeservedly, and I am doing my best not be a hypocrite on the subject. My complaining about having to put pants on to get the mail across the street pales in comparison when I think about the fact that some kids don’t have pants. I am not trying to tell people to stop complaining, because we all have to tell each other how much life sucks so that we don’t feel like we are the only ones who have life doubled over laughing at us, but I am trying to offer some perspective. I mean, I really am sorry that your hand was too fat to fit in the Pringles container and you had to tilt it to get the chips out, but let’s be real here. There are people out there with REAL problems. In the America I grow old, senile, and wrinkly in, I wish to see more children playing outside. I wish to see a healthy, conscious nation that is bent on self improvement, and able to help the less developed and less fortunate. A nation that values personal communication and that has learned to distinguish the genuine from the false, the vital from the meaningless. I wish to look back on the past and think to myself that we have improved as a race, and not degraded into a nation of inactive couch potato imbeciles. Of course, it has never been easy being a privileged citizen of a developed nation, but I like to think that we can do it. .

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