I recently was helping my sister with her college essay when I read one of the suggested topics, "write an essay about a problem that you wish to overcome or solve." This topic got me thinking, how about you? Take a moment and just imagine a list of problems you wish to solve.
I began going over topics with her and eventually we had an entire list of world issues that we wished to solve, a whole page full of problems. I began to wonder why making this list had become so easy, we barely had to try to think and had a full page. Why is that? Did you have any problems making your list? The list consisted of things like war, childhood cancer, homelessness, world hunger, and so on. As sad as all the problems are, I couldn't help but notice one thing, there were no personal issues on this list at all. How about on yours?
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Making this list helped me to come to a very surprising conclusion, I had absolutely no problem compiling a list of issues that most likely I could never personally solve, yet I refused to write any real problems in my own life that I could do something about. This is the epitome of the generation in which we live though. We are so quick to look and see all of the problems in other people's lives or in the world, but when it comes to taking a closer look at ourselves we oftentimes do not want to admit that we have our own problems. Had we been completely honest when making a list maybe it would have looked a little more like saying sorry to the person you hurt yesterday with a snarky remark, telling your parents you actually do appreciate what they do for you instead of constantly arguing with them, admitting that you don't work as hard as you should at certain things.
So the conclusion that I have come to, and I hope you did too, is that maybe there would actually be a whole lot less problems to solve in the world if we worked a little harder on our own problems and didn't focus so much on each others. Right?
