Epidemic

Today I saw something that I hadn't seen in a while and it made me think...

Last year I began to notice several young people wearing Catholic Rosaries around their necks. For those of you who may not know: a rosary is a collection of beads that Catholics use for prayer. Each bead represents a prayer including the crucifix at the end. Rosaries are not meant to be worn.
When I first saw this new trend I asked my husband, who is a public school teacher, to ask his students about it. He did, and the student's response was, "Oh this is my chain". My husband asked if any of the students knew what it is actually called and what its purpose is. They did not.

What if a famous hip-hop star decided it was cool to wear a swastika? Would young people in turn follow their trend? Please understand that I am not comparing the meaning of the rosary to that of the swastika.

 In this age, there is no excuse for such ignorance. We live in a time where information is readidly avaiable at our fingertips. Who ever came up with the saying, "What I don't know can't hurt me." was a damn fool! History has taught us that it absolutly can.

There is an epidemic spreading through our society. It's name is Wilfull Ignorance.

The Question

Eariler this week I stopped by the office of one of my instructors to say hello and to get some guidence on a subject that I want to study on my own. During the conversation I found myself saying things like "this is fun. that is not fun". To clarify, studying linguistics does not seem fun to me. Nethier does post-modernism or algebra. While I understand the importance of such subjects, I must admit that I would rather be studying something that in my opinion is "more fun". By the end of the meeting the instructor posed the question, "because life should be fun"? To which I responded "this should be fun because I am paying for it".I realize that I was probably not meant to spend much time thinking about the question, but I did,and now I am writing about it. Later that day I thought about it some more and wondered if I was being naive in my belief that college and life in general should be fun. Maybe I am; I don't know. I seldome find that people who are being naive ever know that they are being naive until way after the fact. However, I did realize that what I said was not what I meant. What I actually meant was this: While life cannot possibly always be fun, we should do our absolute best to make choices that will make us the happiest, thereby, taking control over the things we can control, and making life fun.

Before I changed my major to English, I was a Secondary Education major. I hated the education courses and lothed having to drive all over Shreveport/Bossier to go observe classrooms, which I rarely found helpful. I made the change, and am much happier now for it. I know that I cannot control everything, and that as an undergraduate liberal arts major I must sometimes take courses that I do not like, read books that I am not intrested in, and write papers about topics that I may care less about. But, when given the opportunity I feel that it is my responsibility to make choices that will make my life "more fun".

So, Readers, what do you think? Should life be fun???