15) Apocalypse How?

Let's face the facts. America is not in a good shape right now. You don't read the front page of the newspaper or watch the local news without seeing some disturbing, convoluted, or depressing image.

And yet here we are, nearing the most holy of days, and the general aura around me seems to be getting sadder and sadder. There is an unspoken, unrealized trend of depression going on, seeping into the very fabric of our lives, dragging us down into the depths of our own private hells.

But who's to blame? You can't really be optimistic when you see the long list of things this current society gets to complain about. There's global warming, the war in the middle east, the destroyed housing market, the collapsed economy, the rising unemployment rate, etc. The list goes on.

I try to remember the happier days, when others around me weren't so grouchy and pessimistic about everything. You could sense the shift from the happier times to the current hell. You might not have seen it, but I did, in very subtle and nearly unnoticeable ways.

Take the slackers for example. There are always a group of people in school that don't do the work, joke around, disrupt class, etc. I always used to think that they really didn't care about their future. But now, I start to question whether they are subconsciously smart enough just not to care anymore. What good does an education do you when the world is ending? Why not laugh it up while you still can? Isn't the guy with no brains and a stable low-paying job worth more nowadays?

I don't really know. All I can know is how to pull through. But if I survive long enough to see the next generation suffer, I can tell them what an idol of mine once said:

If you're going through hell, keep going.

- Winston Churchill