People can make up their own definitions of monsters. They can relate it to a human being who is totally selfish, ignorant, racist, or all the above. An object in their childhood who reminds them of a horrific time, something that didn’t help them or other people in need. We often grow up with the image of monsters being abnormal, nasty, poor, and uneducated. The stereotype often gives away the whole idea of how humans need to respect other humans. At the end of the day we all have been monsters to someone of something in our lives because of our ignorance or privilege in the world. If you don’t recycle, speak up about bullying of any kind, do not like a specific race or ethnicity, give money to charity even if they asked for seventy-five cents. Most of us “monsters” are middle class people who grow up not exploring, not knowing how to think about other people’s lives as much. We choose not to place ourselves in other people’s shoes and think of simple ways to help. We hear a terrible thing that happened on the news, feel remorse, and go back to eating our dinners. We are too caught up in first world problems of things we can’t control and spend too much time stressing about. Too much time being petty, hating our parents and siblings, taking their time and love for granted. Throw away food, waste too much money on objects that won’t make a different in our lives but we want to believe that it will though. We are not learning about other parts of the world and seeing that there are some good places with good factors, and bad places that need fixes and helpers.

I feel as if for most people who grew up in the western world there was an adult saying, “Be grateful of what you have.” They say you can’t always getting what you want and you have to work hard for the finer things in life. While all is that is true, we tend not to listen or care sometimes because we think life will be easy or not that hard. We think ‘why do we have to go to school every single day?’ because we are sure education is not needed. Math isn’t going to help in the future, science is definitely a waste because I won’t be a scientist, I hate reading, and social studies…the past is irrelevant. For me I never thought those things and I’m being completely honest. I was always curious about everything and my parents always reminded me that there are kids my age that can’t even get an education. So it always irked me when I heard other students in my class complain about their lives and how they “don’t need this” They were spoiled middle class family kids. Always asking for pencils but wear shoes worth my entire grocery list. There were ignorant and ungrateful, and I always felt bad for the teachers because they would yell and lecture at the spoiled brats that we are. While we watch documentaries we talk or fall asleep not caring because it doesn’t affect us in a way.

As we grow up some of us get more mature while others don’t. We get too understand most of the things going on and feel sympathy and stop the jokes. Yet we still go own our lives only caring what happens to us, not really helping or changing the world for the better. We choose not to speak up about some things, side with people around us how maybe know nothing more than us about the topic and go on being ignorant because it’s easier. Even though there are people suffering, truly broken, crying for help we ultimately don’t want to listen, don’t want to know or speak about it and that is truly horrific. It’s sad the way we grew up privileged but selfish at the same time, knowing the environment around us is bearable to survive and be happy so we are comfortable. Most of us are not disabled, we have a home and family, food and water, friends and have an opportunity at a good life. Yet when we know that there are literally millions of people that don’t have the luxury, that security that we have, we do nothing. We don’t try to help in a significant way because that is a choice for us. We choose whether to be a human or a monster. Now you have to ask yourself and do an evaluation, ‘Am I a monster?’