“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy”-Martin Luther King Jr.

After September 11^th, 2001, the United States launched an attack on a country that, once upon a time, we helped, and on a man that we trained.

Years ago, the group known today as Al Qaeda was a group that we assisted, they were Freedom Fighters, the underdogs. And Osama Bin Laden? Yeah, our CIA trained him and gave him and his group weapons. He and his group pushed the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, something that was rejoiced by the Afghani people, as we saw in A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Flash forward to May 1^st, 2011. The United States is celebrating…why? Someone died. We are celebrating a death. And yet, no one seems to find anything wrong with that.

I understand that this man was the cause of many lives lost and ruined in the United States, and I understand that he posed a huge threat to our country. But to celebrate a life lost? That, I don’t understand.

Where I lived before here, Middletown, New Jersey, los the most victims per capita in the state, and was only the 2^nd hardest hit city after New York due to 9/11, so yeah, I get it. I have a friend whose dad was supposed to go to the World Trade Center that day, but her mom woke up and told him not to go. The few days after the attack we weren’t allowed outside for recess because they were worried about the ash. So of all people, I understand why the downfall of this man is a good thing…but something to be celebrated? That’s not exactly something I agree with.

Are we all alone?

One of our essential question this unit asked us to make one statement that expresses our beliefs about humanity and/or human nature. I responded by saying “if you take a step back, you will see that no on is alone in anything. There is always someone who feels, or has felt the same way as you do. And yet, we are ignorant enough to think that we are alone in the world and have to persevere without the help of others.”

I find that many people feel that no one has ever felt the way they do, no one understands how they feel, and they’re alone, with no way out. However, being a girl that many people have come to for advice, I’ve realized that almost everyone goes through the exact same things. Girls get hurt by guys, girls get in fights with friends, guys don’t really argue with friends, but I know a few that have gotten hurt by girls. The thing is, after hearing all of these stories and problems, I’ve started to understand that it’s the same thing, over and over.

A girl is worried that she is losing a friend, so the accusations fly, and they end up in a worse situation than they started in. A guy falls for a girl who he thinks is perfect, and finds out that is not the case. The perfect couple gets together, you know, the one everyone’s jealous of, but they cannot physically be together because one of them moved. Sound familiar? Of course, because everyon experiences, or knows someone who has experienced, the same things.

And after all this, why do we refuse the comfort of someone else saying “I get it.” Why do girls continue to believe that their best friend secretly doesn’t want to talk anymore? Why do men refuse to ask directions?

We are such an egocentric society. It starts at age two and never really goes away. “I can do it myself.” But if we just look around and accept help from others, maybe our lives wouldn’t be so hard, maybe there would be less tears and more triumphs. But hey, I’m just a teenager, what do I know?

“So now, all alone or not, you gotta walk ahead. Thing to remember is, if we’re all alone, then we’re together in that too.”

Men, will they ever make up their minds?

"Women, are they ever satisfied?" was the spark for this blog, thank you Mrs. Burnett. So why is it, that guys complain that we're never satisfied, when we have proof that they cannot, and have not been able to make up their minds, for centuries! Maybe we're so unsatisfied because we never get a straight decision from the men that dominate society.

Virginia Woolf wrote, "one might go even further and say that women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time--Clytemnestra, Antigone, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Phedre, Cressida, Rosalind, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi, among the dramatists; and among the prose writers: Millamant, Clarissa, Becky Sharp, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Madame du Guermantes--the names flock to mind, nor do they recall women 'lacking in personality and character.' Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance...but this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up and flung about the room."

Now, I know that's an unnecessarily long quote, but she has a point. Men write these amazing women characters. Women "as great as man, some think even greater." Writing characters like these would lead one to believe that maybe, just maybe, they wanted women to behave as their women characters. It would only make sense, right? Wrong.

Men may have written these wonderful, heroic, honorable women, but how did they treat the women in their lives? The women surrounding them were property. They were dolls, little squirrels, they were driven crazy from being locked in a room with bars on the windows. So I can say with a little confidence, that we have every right to be a little hard to please, because men said to the outside world that they wanted one thing, but acted in another way entirely. Apparently treating women was easier said than done.

This blog may not have much "integrity," because it's true, I do have a bone to pick, I am upset at how things have been between women and men. There was such a disparity between what men said and what they did that I think we deserve our credit now. Today sexism is not nearly as prevalent. In many cases it is almost completely gone, which is great. Women know that we are capable of anything that men can do, if not more (I mean hey, we do it in heels). We teach little girls that they can be anything they want to be, and the same goes for little boys. If you set your heart to it, you can do anything. If anyone tells you that you can't do something, look them straight in the face and say "watch me."