I believe in a better world. One that doesn’t have us chained to a desk and laboring our lives away. A world that doesn’t depend on the siphoning of all your energy to afford few pleasures. There has to be a world where we can watch our children grow and spend time with our parents. Some place exists where we don’t measure happiness by 15 second videos. I refuse to believe that is even a world that we’ve created, more like a system. The system is broken.

There were times when things weren’t so expensive. Where we could put in our hours and not spend the remainder of our time stressing about how little we have left. Surely we can return to those times, but I don’t think that is what the system wants. If we make more, there is more that we should buy to fit into our social class. The purpose of each new creation is not to better our lives but to pry more of earnings from our lifeless hands. We are left with just enough energy to scroll our thumb upwards to the next reel. This is the world we want?

I am certainly priveleged, but I suppose having a child has woke me up to the disastrous society that we have created for them. Will the children still play outside? Will they see the natural wonders of the world with amazement, or will it just be on a screen? Is my child to slave away from the moment he turns 18 until long after I am gone? What kind of world is that?

In my 20’s, I often heard from friends with kids, and my own parents, that their primary goal for working was to provide their child a better life. Is that really what we have done? Look at the hatred, the animosity, the pollution, the grime of our cities. Is this a better life? The collective effort of generations of parents have brought us to a place where we most certainly are not leading them to a place of a better life. Sure, there might be more comforts, there might be more “cool stuff,” but what will be their self-worth? What will be their capacity for love?

Somewhere along the way, the system broke. We were just too mesmerized by the latest “advancements” that we failed to see it. I am lucky to be alive today, but I fear that generations to come will not feel the same. We are not advancing, we are regressing. There need be change. I believe in a better world.