How will I ever find peace

I'm torn. Life has so much sorrow. Right now, there are youth who are being abused, beaten, raped, neglected. They are starving themselves, puking on purpose, cutting themselves, seeking validation through unhealthy sex, escaping with drugs, ending up in mental hospitals, killing themselves. They act out, and get in trouble, and our response as a society is to discipline them and write them off. The worst of us abuse them further with absurd notions of how to deal with them. The best of us try to reach out, but we're mostly powerless to do anything. We try to give them direction and hope, and then we hope they survive long enough to find something to give their life meaning and purpose. But they're forever scarred. One such youth told me she's glad that her life was what it was, and it was a life of terrible events she barely survived, because it kept her from being shallow. Is this the best we can hope for for our troubled youth? Can we not focus more of our time and resources on caring for each other?

What do we focus on instead? Big screen TV's, nice houses, fancy cars, soda, sports, fear factor. How much money does America spend on soda each day? How much do we spend on youth intervention programs? We retreat into our own lives, lives of consumption, we live and let die. And I do the same. The list of toys I want to own is long and pointless. But what else is there to do?

I'm torn. I want to do something meaningful, something that alleviates suffering. At the same time I want to experience the pleasures of wealth and flesh. I am a catcher in the rye watching as some survive and some go over the cliff, and doing little about any of it.

So I will continue to do the work of spiritual awakening. I will seek strength, both rigidity and and resiliencey, as Buddha taught. I do not yet know what path I will choose. I still hold onto the dream of being a working perfomer and surrendering to the world of distraction, but I also ponder devoting the rest of my life to some form of intervention work.

"This is a lonely life, sorrow is everywhere you turn/yes that is worth something now that is worth some money" Paul Simon