I am not sure of the exact date, but Canada had its first homicide of 08 already, and I am sure some of you canadians may of heard this already, but I may be a little bit closer (though still not close) to this then you. My best friends, dads, friends, daughter (that's really stretching out I understand) was murdered the otherday with a knife, and sure, through-out a typical year you'll hear this happen, it's a disgusting thought killing somebody, and using mental illness as some kind of excuse just discusts me. However, I am not sure everyone really knows why this girl was murdered, and seeing as my best friend has a really close link to this, growing up with the girl and all, I would like to tell you that this girl was killed because her ex-boyfriends new girlfriend was jealous of her, and told her boyfriend to stab her, so he did. She's now just part of a statistic and everyone around her is hurt for what? Nothing.
Today also in my home town of Peterborough England, was a lot of violence. There is a main shopping area in the middle of my city that a lot of us called "Town", weird fact I know. So in this town there is this one street, I never understood why it was there, but it was there. So today a man thought, what the hell, I think i'll go down that street and purposely run two men over, so he did. A mob formed around his car trying to drag him out his car in reaction to him running over the two innocent pedestrians, and so he pulled out an 8 inch knife and stabbed a member of the public. Luckily everyone lived through this ordeal so there was no casualties.
Now one that directs directly upon me. The longest road (to my knowledge) in the world is a road in canada called Yonge Street, this street runs through my little town of Newmarket and on this busy street were two of four kids. These two kids must of thought it'd be fun or comedic, but they decided, lets have a fight in the middle of the road whilst cars are coming, and so they did. I was like "what the hell is going on over there? those idiots!" and so I kept walking not knowing what was going on, but it turns out they were just friends play fighting because they both got off the road in time and sat at the bus stop. I don't know what made the guy do this, but one of them jumped onto the seat and started banging on the window as if he were a caged animal trying to escape.
Another one that isn't really violence but more of a tragedy, my girlfriends, dads, best friends, 2 year old son died today of cancer.
And so I guess all these thoughts brought up some memories of mine from school, and how I am surrounded by these people that are just so caught up in what they think is our situation. I remember this one person bringing up that all wars that have ever happened, have happened because of the government wanting more money, land or oil. I seem to recall that the crusades were lead by religous extremists.
Another point I recall was somebody in my english class was doing a debate on whether or not stim cell research was good or bad, he brought up the point that the nazi's studied stem cells on jewish people and that ever since the word go, stem cell research has been un-ethically acceptable. I could see that as some kind of ethical dillemna for a jew, but in my eyes, the fact that Hitler actually had a purpose with some of the jews he killed, only justifies the un-ethical treatment they substained, and I dont mean justified as in what he did was right, but what he did was more then just senseless killing, I still disagree on the hollocaust.
We had a speaker come in a month ago for world vision, they talked about how most animals get fed 3 dollars of food a day, whilst half the words population lives on only 2 dollars of food a day. Some people were saying after wards that "our country has enough problems as it is, we need to solve our own problems on the streets before we solve theirs" and another said "solving their problems only gives us more problems" so now I ask people, how does helping others come back and bite us? Is it ethically incorrect to help others? Is it really that bad on our economy to spare some money now and then? And how does a 16 to 18 year old have to live with pressure from the streets?
So now I just really needed to express how I felt about all this, and people may, though some may not, wonder why the name of this topic was called "Imagine" well I thought John Lennon's (from The Beatles) song was really fitting, so I would now like to give you a copy of the words, that you dont have to read unless you want to, and a link to the song if you haven't already heard it.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jEOkxRLzBf0
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
None.