If you want something to change, then change it

On any given day, if a student walks around George Mason University’s campus they are guaranteed to see advertisements promoting various different charity organizations or good causes.
Students typically do not pay any attention to these advertisements. They walk right past them without giving them a second thought.
Recently, I heard a conversation between two Mason students. One stated, “You shouldn’t go to the circus. They abuse the poor elephants.” The other student replied, “It makes me really sad that they do that to the elephants, but it won’t stop anything if I don’t go. So, I bought tickets anyway.”
This sort of scenario happens too frequently.
People are sympathetic to a cause, but they do nothing. They feel as if they will never make a change.
If everyone in the world had this mentality, imagine how much worse the world would be.
What people fail to realize is that change happens on a small scale. The power one individual has to positively affect another is exponential. People tend to forget this when they make decisions.
I know of a student who lost touch with one of her friends. After not speaking for awhile, the student decided that she wanted to rekindle the old friendship and go to a party.
This student let her old friend drive them home from the party after they had been drinking. Before the two were able to make it home the car hit a guardrail.
The student was killed on impact, but the friend who had been driving survived. It never seems fair when a young and healthy individual loses her life.
One careless and unpredictable decision was enough to bring about a tragedy.
People are like dominos. We are stacked incredibly close to one another and if one falls, the rest go down.
Often, people forget that their actions have consequences and that not only will they be inflicting these consequences on themselves, but they will be likely to affect everyone around them. For example, college students often forget the consequences that unprotected sex can bring about. STDs and STIs spread at a rapid rate.
One run-in with one of these diseases may easily end a student’s opportunity to live a normal life. People who refuse to get tested and don’t want to accept that they are putting others at risk are selfish. It would only take one small step to ensure that they are not harming someone else.
Changing the world doesn’t happen overnight, but each and every individual who lives on this earth possesses the capability to change it.
Making a difference doesn’t mean you have to donate loads of money to a charity or volunteer all of your time on the weekends. Making a difference can happen through the simplest of actions, such as opening a door for someone, not getting behind the wheel of a car when you know you’ve been drinking, being honest to your partner about your past or even picking up a piece of trash off of the sidewalk. Every individual is capable of making a difference.
Stop waiting on the world to change. Change it.