Your Freedom. Your Future - Is South Africa at a fork in the road and which road should we take? - Zahra Vayej
“What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
Over the course of my 14 years of existence, I’ve been told many times that I’m quite a curious person. Inquistive.Rather opinionated. and I remembered, after having had a heated debate with my teacher on the death penalty, that perhaps the world needs more curious people.
People, who instead of blindly following the rules,are willing to erase the dangerous line that society forces us not to cross. I’m going to be rather bold and assume that perhaps the topic for this essay is based loosely on Robert Frost's poem;‘The Road Not Taken’,as the poem's deeper meaning speaks of the choices we are given over the course of our lives. We as youth and the next generation of voices, needs to understand how our choices can affect society. This world that we are living in; this world full of racism and poverty and sexism and stereotypes, happen to be in dire need of change. With a pandemic upon us wiping out millions of lives, I’ve recently become more interested in the way the world works, not the scientific part, more of the-behind-the-scenes; the hidden, unpleasant parts of society that no one wants to be exposed to.
For those who don’t suffer, why should we bother with change? Why should we take this strenuous challenge upon ourselves to try and convince others that there are people who are not as privileged as us? There are children out there starving in Yemen, and people are ostracized daily in countries all over the world just because they look different? Why bother when it doesn’t affect us personally? Perhaps it’s the nature of human kind,or the fact that I’m just a person interested in the unjust workings of the world, but I believe that deep down,it does affect us all. Whether we are fighting against misogynistic attitudes or voting for different political parties,the choices we make will one day affect someone’s life. I feel it’s important for us to be educated that the world isn’t some happy place, fit for all humans. Society judges people for being different, for looking different. People wonder why high schools have cliques but shouldn’t they be wondering where children learnt to form them instead? I honestly doubt that in any religious book, God said that people of a certain race would take preference over others when it comes to the afterlife, that the rich will go to heaven and the poor will go to hell.You could be the richest person in the world and I doubt any of your money would matter if you had a terrible soul. I speak with absolute certainty when I say that neither do I think men should take preference over women. A difference in body parts between a male and female shouldn’t make one of lesser value than the other. Neither should it be able to justify actions that people overlook in society.It seems to me that nowadays, people often forget the meaning of no. It's a very simple word in my opinion.
One syllable. Only 2 letters.But men and women alike often tend to confuse it with yes, but excuses are often made for these mistakes. These ‘mistakes’ are just nothing right? When a girl says no but a boy hears yes and goes ahead. When a policeman kills an African person for no other reason than being black it’s just a mistake. But how many mistakes can there be? How many until justice will be served? How many times will the words ‘she was drunk’ be used to rectify something that should never be doubted in the first place? And I hope that soon, people will start to the see the world the way I see it. Nothing should separate us as people, that we all breathe the same air and at the end of the day, the only reason we are different from others is that we single ourselves out to be. It's a choice we make. It's a choice we live by and soon, for those who carry on in their world of oblivion, it will be a choice at the hands by which they will die.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference” – Robert Frost , The Road Not Taken.
Thank You
