What's Your Breaking Point?

      

In the article, "Letter to my daughter (in the wake of senseless tragedy)" by Vicky Bell, Bell encourages her daughter that nothing ruins your life forever. She uses the example of the recent suicide by a homosexual college student that was a victim of extreme torment. She says that if he would have waited another month or two it may have died down a bit, but now his life is over because he didn’t consider that.

I can relate to this. My mom was telling me today about when she was growing up and how her parents raised her; in their eyes every B was a failure-you could never recover from it. I guess that might be why we have been raised in a manner that any punishment we receive, we can get out of by making a few sacrifices- nothing is the end of the world; there is always a way out.

The stresses on the average student today are impeccable. When I say that a person would typically assume I am talking about high school or college, but even elementary students feel the wrath of society’s expectations. My fourth grade brother sometimes has even more homework than me. He wouldn’t want me to share this on a public website (but he will never find out)-he cries every night worrying about grades. In fourth grade my only worry was about catching cooties from the boy sitting next to me.

The stresses and expectations of people scares me to death. Will it be twenty times worse in 5 years? I am hearing more and more stories about teen suicide lately; I just think to myself- what it my breaking point? At what point would I bring myself to do that? From now on I will just think off what Bell tells us, “Nothing ruins your life forever. NOTHING.”

Apologies

In the article, “Wave of Toxic Sludge Reaches the Danube River” from MSNBC demonstrates the egocentric way of life some people live. In Hungary, one of the byproducts of making metal is a red “toxic sludge”. It has a pH level of 13, making it highly acidic, and burns human skin. This company knew the effects of it but continued making it for decades. Inevitably, the damn they were keeping the 185 gallons of sludge in collapsed. Initially, this flooded a town making it a “dead town”; eventually it made its way to the Danube River, threatening aquatic life.

            Why did this company keep producing this waste when they fully knew what it could do to a human body? Some say it is because it was fast, efficient, and cheap; well at the time at least. Now they are facing compensation charges for the town of 800 that is now proclaimed a “dead town”. Maybe it was because they had to compete with countries like America and couldn’t waste time fretting about long term effects; only how they could get their product out the fastest. Does this happen in our own lives? People seem to take the easy way out, including me. Skipping steps and precautions sometimes works; but are you willing to risk what will happen if it doesn’t?

This company is responsible for at least 4 deaths, and many more serious injuries. If they had just harmed their profits, then that is one thing; they killed not only a few people, because the liveliness of many more is lost. Some of their whole lives were about farming, and now their land is radioactive. Think about how many times you have ruined something for yourself; then think of when you have ruined something for somebody else and knew about it before. You might apologize perfused and try to fix it; we need to learn to do what is best for everybody in the first place to avoid the apologies later.