Which Lifeline?

What?

I sent out emails, letters…rang a few friends, talked to a few people from work about their perspective on the world and the future, stuff like that. I made sure that I only asked people I knew well, or knew me well because I didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or me seem patronising.

Why?

I believe that to understand things in life, it’s important to see things from other angles and views. To get some insight into what other people think is an important part of understanding.

I guess this sounds very generic and repetitive but one person’s view is merely “one person’s view” – it can be really interesting to look at things through somebody else’s eyes – different culture/background/sex/age…you can learn a lot, and hey, you might decide to re-think your own view on things.

The Outcome

I only sent out my little email a few days ago, and received a few responses from that. People at work were very helpful and gave me their opinion on things. Workmates were great because of the different age group.

I think asking people in person, is more effective than email/phone etc. I reckon email is best for business purposes etc. but for more personal things – face2face is still the way.

For the people I asked, many had a negative view and I really started thinking about society and what they were doing wrong and in one case, asked me whether they could do something to help! (directed them to actnow.com.au of course…).

My Reflection

I have definitely re-thought my view on the world, the future and what I can do to try fix it.

So here’s my rant:

The future does seem quite scary and I sometimes think…what are the leaders of the world doing about it? The US and Australia haven’t ratified Kyoto, Kevin Rudd says he will but part of me still think that political leaders are full of empty promises. So here’s what I think – I believe that every young person can be a leader in their own way, we can’t really put our future in the hands of Rudd/Howard/etc… we can control our own future by making incremental changes to our lifestyles, adopting strong values and spreading the word. By raising awareness and leading by example – every young person in Australia has the potential to turn this world around. We need to continually urge our peers that inaction could be the end of our country, our race. If every young person stepped up – we could be the true leaders of this country (if that makes sense…?)