 It's a weird time that we live in right now, isn't it? It seems like we're stuck in this weird paradox where we have taller buildings but shorter tempers. We seem to drive on wider freeways but have narrower viewpoints. We spend more money than we ever have but we spend less time with the people who we actually love. We hate our jobs but we spend more time at work. We have more dads but honestly we seem to have less fathers. We have more degrees but less sense. We have more knowledge but less wisdom. There's more experts in every single field but we have more problems. We have more guns but we feel less safe. We have more prescriptions but less wellness. We smoke too much, we drink too much, we spend too recklessly and we laugh too little. We get angry too quickly, we watch too much TV, we don't read enough and we probably don't pray enough either. We've increased all of our possessions but we've lowered our value. We've learned to talk more but forgotten how to take a step back and actually listen to a friend in need. We don't seem to love enough, we seem to hate too much, we're really quick to judge, really slow to accept somebody. We've been all the way to the moon and back but we have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor and have a chat. We've conquered outer space but we haven't conquered inner space. We've done larger and grander things but they haven't really been better things necessarily. We talk about how we're going to clean the air but continue to pollute our souls. We're quick to accept that friend request but we're really slow to accept somebody who doesn't look like us. We have more information at our fingertips than we ever have but we learn less and less from it. We've built more computers that hold more information but we feel more empty. We're more connected than we ever have been but one in five people suffers from loneliness. We can swipe left, we can swipe right but we're left with relationships that just don't feel right. We spend a ton of time on social media but not enough time on social justice. These are the times of fast food, slow digestion, tall men, short characters. We have more food than we've ever had before but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce. Bigger, fancier houses but most of them just seem to be broken homes. These are the days of throw away morality, one night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill. It's a time when technology can bring this message directly to you and you can either share this insight or you can just choose to hit delete. So how do we stop it? How do we break this cycle that we all seem to be stuck in right now? I think what we need to do is need to remove ourselves from it and quiet our minds and ask ourselves what do we want to change? As Gandhi said, we need to become that change because everybody seems to want change but very few people want to change. It requires the self-awareness to take a step back, look at ourselves and ask what adjustments we need to make and for us to actually make those changes because we can't change everybody else around us but if we change ourselves, you and I, we might inspire others to do the same as well and you never know, that may actually be the ripple effect that the world needs right now. If you scratch a cynic, you'll find a disappointed idealist and I would admit that somewhere underneath all of this is a little flicker of a flame of idealism that would love to see it all change.