Don't Cry over Spilt Milk

This weekend, my friends and I went to the HOSA State Conference. Saturday morning, we were to depart at around 8, and even then, that’s quite early for me. Being the groggy non-morning person I am, I yawned and said “where’s our waitress?” Oops. I should’ve seen this coming, as Tiffany said, “you mean our waitron?” I immediately realized my mistake as I noticed there were multiple men and women working the restaurant. But then, I wondered why before 11 AP English I had barely ever heard the term before.  The term "waitron" began as a derogatory and demeaning term and it was borrowed from the word " automaton"  because being a server was thought to be a mindless and almost robotic activity. As Kakutani said, “ Certainly no decent person can quarrel  with the underlying impulse behind political correctness: a vision of a more just, inclusive society in which racism, sexism and prejudice of all sorts have been erased.” But if someone even slightly disagrees with poli...

The difference between wants and needs is quite simple, at least on the surface.  Need: something you must have.  Want: something you would like to have.  In actuality, you only need four things to survive: A roof over your head, enough food and water to maintain your health, basic health care, and hygiene products, and clothing (just what you need to remain comfortable and appropriately dressed) Everything that goes beyond this—a big house, name-brand clothes, fancy food and drinks, and a new car—is a want. Does that mean that you should only buy the things that you need? Not at all. Life is meant to be lived, not survived. The denotations of these words are very different, but people seem to mix up and use these words interchangeably. Most people nowadays want to live lavish lives, and that includes obsessing over materialistic objects. This shallow and vain infatuation with consumerism eats away at each of us one by one. From one of Thomas Sowell...

There is darkness and there is light. There is negativity and there is positivity. None of these are intrinsically bad or good. Just as electricity doesn't exist without both a negative and positive charge, both darkness and light are necessary for us to engage with the experience of life in this universe. If there were only light, I suspect life and existence would be infinite boredom. If there were only one divine being in existence with no diversity, nothing else to interact with, you and I would not exist as separate entities to interact with each other. And if all were darkness, we could not see or experience anything either. We would be completely unconscious or not exist. And remember that all the darkness in the world cannot put out the light of a single candle. We need both light and dark. As any good photographer will tell you, it is the contrast of light and shadows which creates beauty and mystery. They must find the chiaroscuro. It is the interplay of light and ...

Last night my family went to dinner at  P.F. Chang's , and everything seemed to be centered around my brother as this is the first time he’s been home in months, but I wasn’t complaining. My parents asked my brother how his volunteer work was going since he’ll be applying to medical school soon and he’s been lacking in that department. He started complaining about how he’s been assigned to this family that recently moved here, but they can’t speak English at all. The family he’s been assigned to only speaks Hindi, but that’s not the language my family speaks. Since we were born, my parents have spoken to us in our language, and my brother and I have responded in English. That’s just the way its been for 22 years of my brother’s life and 17 years of mine. Even then, Hindi isn’t our native tongue. Thankfully, my parents have lived in India for most of their lifetime somehow learned Hindi and offered to call my brother whenever he must run the family’s errands with them. My brother ...