All around me are responsibilities, things that I should do, something that I must do. Every day, we have choices, things we must choose; some conscious others less noticeable. Every day, I get up at 6 or 7 am, go to school, get home, do chores, do homework, help the people around me, and even spend an hour in the garden weekly. All things that bring me to my higher self, things that help me maintain equilibrium. These things are fragile, ready to fall like glass when not completed. Prepared to face the disappointment and consequences when I don’t fulfill these tasks, these explicit callings. 

As I engage in these everyday callings, I also get to know the world around me, and deeper and deeper these callings sink into my consciousness. Farther and farther I push them away as I become “busier and busier” unable to feign care, falling into sleep and ignorance. Slowly my ego blinds me as I watch democracy and the world around me become destroyed. As I watch others around me do the same, sink into ignorance and sleep. It becomes easier to ignore the tv playing the struggles of others or highlighting that our government couldn’t come to a decision 14 times over the span of 4 days. 

In today’s world, we are trained to become busy, too busy to make time for other things, to even find the silence in today. People are so trained to only make time for the explicit callings that they forget all about the implicit callings. Despite that, I find the silence in my day, even just for 10 minutes, to equip myself with knowledge of what is going on around me. I find time to really understand what the tv is saying as I wash the dishes or clean the house. I find time to write my thoughts down right before my eyes hit the pillow. It’s in these moments that I can feel the heaviness in my eyes covered by my ego start to lift. I find that I too am contributing to the glass’s fragility, that I am hitting the glass, watching it crack and start to break. During this time, I start to pay more attention to the homeless people down the block next to million-dollar houses. I start to understand how the plastic I buy weekly affects those all around the world and even my own quality of air. 

Finding the silence in our days is the first step, since everyone is so accustomed to being on the go all the time, the mind is taken up about what consequences will ensue if they don’t complete a certain explicit calling. It’s easy to procrastinate the equally as important implicit callings especially when its consequences are not as immediate. 

When we realize that our smaller worlds are encompassed by this world that we all share, that is slowly but surely being destroyed. It’s when the glass breaks when it’s too late to do anything. Then we will wish that we hadden habituated ignorance. Instead of dedicating an hour scrolling on social media, dedicate even ten minutes to learning about what happened around the world, or even in your local neighborhood.