Slavery. Sex trafficking. Brainwashing. Discrimination. Opression. …And big governments publicly torturing, humiliating, and killing innocent people all around the world.These are not the ideal topics most people want to think about, either because they believe these issues are of another time or place than their own, or because it is simply too hopeless to get all worked up about something that is out of a single individual’s control.

But these are just excuses because most of us are too busy with our own lives to do anything but silently feel sorry and pray for victims of such injustice for a few moments, if even that. The truth is that these are very current issues that will continue to remain current for the future generations, unless the voices of the oppressed are heard by a majority. It is true that only thinking about it, or complaining about it, or even writing about it will not lead to much change. It is also true that one person cannot directly change a law, or the way of thinking of a large group of people. But it only takes one person to take the first step towards a second person taking a second step.

Below are a few links that will hopefully help shed light on such issues today. I hope that you will be able to find the time to take the first step and become aware of just how many humans are being denied basic human rights.

“When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery. He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.” -Thornton Wilder

If this is true, then God must love me very much because this quotation describes my life perfectly. I just cannot understand how it is possible for me to be so at peace in my faith, so happy with myself, so content with the abundance of blessings my life is continually showered with, while being painfully aware of the constant suffering of man at the exact same time. Not just suffering in the greater worldly sense, but even the daily struggles of my own loved ones in a very first-world life. At any given moment in time, I am torn between these highs and lows, struggling to find a balance and a satisfaction that may never come.

There is enough bad in the world that comes naturally–sickness, natural disasters, death. Why do people have to impose more unnecessary pain upon their fellow brothers and sisters? Why are there people with such closed minds and small hearts, with such a need for societal acceptance and a blind search for what they believe is success, that they forget about their souls and the life hereafter? These and many other questions that fill my mind may never be answered, and I am not naive enough to think that one day such people will no longer exist. But I am an eternal optimist and a dreamer, and I hope that over time, through the coming generations, there will be fewer and fewer occurences of such injustice, and that humanity will work together to move towards a happier and more just future.