Response to the reading "Zeitoun"

    "The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity."
                                         - Thomas Peacock



      In the narrative “Zeitoun”, Zeitoun didn’t want his daughters to be the average teenager when it came to being wasteful. So many people in this country take for granted the things that are given to them. I truly believe the quote that says, “If you don’t pay for it, your heart won’t hurt for it.” I find it to be true in everyday life. Here at SMU, so many students walk around campus on their expensive cell phones and designer clothes and don't think about where all these material things come from.

     When I’m at Umphrey Lee (the school's cafeteria) at SMU I see so much food being wasted. What was prepared for the students of SMU could be taken over to third-world countries and given to the starving or malnourished.  We eat every day! There has to be something we can do. I hate sitting helplessly and not dong anything. Our country has spent so much money on a pointless war, and now we have no money to aid people that are in need of our help.

     “Zeitoun” made me think about how much we actually do waste and don’t appreciate things; it’s sickening. It’s sickening that people don’t value the small things in this world. I believe that if God gives you something, and you don’t appreciate it wholly he’ll take it away from you to teach you a lesson. I honestly believe that that is what he did with Hurricane Katrina. I believe that the people who resided in New Orleans didn't appreciate what God provided for them, so he took it away. I know this is a generalization, but there is no other reason why a hurricane so humongous would hit a city and completely DESTROY it like Hurrican Katrina did to New Orleans.

     When I think about Americans being wasteful, I think about the way Americans are raised. Which raised question. Should parents allow their children to waste when they're young? Old habits are hard to break and this sense of not valuing anything is ingrained in our generation.It is a part of our culture to receive things easily with ease. Is this necessarily a bad thing?

     All I know is, I can’t live any longer in this world of waste. I also can’t sit around and allow others to do the same. If this cycle of waste continues the world will be eradicated. The world cannot stand much more waste before it starts depleting. Let's take a stand. Let's make a difference in our community.