<p>holy ****.
just…wow
words cannot begin to describe how grateful i am to be alive, to be financially stable, to live in a nice house, to be getting a great education, to be going to college…there are so many people whom I admire so much now because they work minimum-wage jobs, live in small one-room apartments with their entire family, and hope for a better future through hard work and sacrifice. they are rewarded so little for such hard work, yet they feel grateful nonetheless and take nothing for granted.</p>
<pre><code>and i feel now forever grateful to my parents, who give me a great education, create enough financial stability for me to do well enough in school that i can get into caltech, after which i will be able to get a job where i can live comfortably for the rest of my life. who cares about grades? who cares about test scores? who cares about how much money i make after i graduate? who cares if my college isn’t as prestigious as yours? who cares if i don’t have a boyfriend? all of this seems unbelievably trivial, such ridiculously unimportant things when compared to the horrible lives of such as Maria and Carla in the movie and millions in real life who work most of their day in a minimum-wage paying job and live with four others in a small two-room apartment…hoping one day to provide a young son a future that he is probably going to take all for granted. yeah, in fifteen years his parents’ protests that, oh, we worked so hard to get where you are and now you’re taking it all for granted, would fall on deaf ears as they so frequently do on my ears or my peers’. it’s a good thing that my parents don’t complain like this though, although they are certainly qualified to do so.
it’s all for granted here in our generation, isn’t it? some of us probably live in a nice home with immigrant parents who remember having to live four to a room, and who also probably remember the scares and uncertainties of traveling from a far-off country like Colombia, facing the difficulties of getting a job, learning a new language in such a foreign land, and finding a surrogate family in others who, too, have come here in the same conditions.
and this is why i am so happy that i live in a house with my own room, my own bathroom, all the books that i want, never having worked a real job for more than a few hours, expecting to go to a $50,000-a-year school, just taking for granted that i’m going to get one of the best educations in the country - and sometimes taking it as a chore. a well-paying job after graduation is almost a given, it is whether or not i’ll be making over $100,000 a year as a starting salary that is my main concern. i don’t really question if i’ll be driving a car, i want the best: i want a lexus, i want a bmw, i want a mercedes…all of my friends have mercedes, ferraris, etc, so why can’t i? my parents encourage me to “follow my passion” instead of working to feed my baby sister. would i get even a little bit of this privilege if i was born into family like Maria Alvarez’s? and here i am, worrying about my calculus grade, worrying about having to walk 15 minutes in the cold to school every day, worrying about whether or not my college interview went great or only good… there is so much else left in the world to effing think about, things that will blow my mind, things that i cannot even begin to comprehend, because i live in a sheltered world of $200 shoes and unlimited food and privilege, privilege, privilege. and i take it all, every little bit, for granted.
i guess that’s the american dream. to work hard, every moment of your life, at some minimum-wage-paying, unstimulating factory job for 8 hours a day, making those few dollars and saving every penny, just so your children can live comfortably in their own rooms with their own computers, iPods, cars…in a great neighborhood, getting an amazing education…just so they could look past all of it, lament about how they don’t have the latest $100 t-shirt or $100,000 car, and move out after high school and never come back.
and the drug world. wow, it’s depicted pretty horribly…and the one hour and forty minutes probably could not do it justice. it seems like so many of these people who are used, coerced, and tricked to carry drugs from third-world countries are disposable plastic bags for the rich, those willing to drop one grand on a bit of cocaine for a moment of fun. i wonder if paris hilton, who has been photographed a million times with a kilo of cocaine, knows that a lot of it has come from people who have had cocaine pellets leak inside them and their bodies would be cut up to harvest the drugs?
of course, maria’s story is also one of hope, strength, and determination. in the end, she turns around at the airport gate to pursue a life in America instead. she knows how hard it will be; she’s seen Carla, who works paycheck to paycheck and barely keeps her family afloat. but she knows that no matter how hard she has to work, she can’t spend her life in Colombia with her stagnated life, picking thorns off flowers, having her baby do the same thing, and her grandchildren after that. she knows that in america there are opportunities that she will not get back home. even if those opportunities are not for her, but for her child, she will take it, and she will work hard, and one day she will prevail.
oh man how inspirational
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