Wheel of Fortune

I've been ignoring the news lately.
And by lately I mean all summer.
Though the BBC News is my homepage, I somehow bypass it every time I log on in favor of Facebook and other such mindless things.
I'm now catching up on my headlines, and I realize that it's an incredibly luxury to be able to ignore the news. To be able to ignore such things as the release of highly dangerous bombers (Lockerbie bombing, UK and Middle East), major explosions of power-plants (Russia), thousands of children falling sick with lead poisoning due to toxic factory leaks (China), and people coming together courageously to vote in an election opposed by the Taliban. It's a luxury that, sitting pretty in my home over here in North America, I can ignore what's happening in and to the world, retreating into my bubble.
I look at it as a blessing and a curse. Obviously, it is a blessing that I live in a country safe enough to be immune to all of these atrocities, but the blissfulness of ignorance is still simply ignorance. It's a trait I can not stand in others, although I know I have it, too. It comes from a lifetime of being bred in a bubble in which I remain safely untouched by the events of the world.
The first time I realized this was the traumatic 9/11, though compared to many world events 9/11 is far from the worst. I was informed of it at eleven years of age. Sitting in my Grade 6 classroom. We were silent for a full minute. The moment passed. Life resumed as though nothing had happened. Across the continent there was panic, heart wrenching despair, and disbelief. My emotions were limited to annoyance for the notes I made on various subjects.
Since then life has kept to its fashion. I rarely am cursed by having to feel any outrage or sadness at events happening many miles from where I am. I think the closest I have come was the four months I spent my last year of high school on a crusade against all the bad in the world. If I could have I would have hopped a plane to Burma and protested along with the monks. Of course, the more you watch the world crumble, the more hopeless it becomes.
I am not only ignorant, but a coward. Even in talking about the strife of the world, I have become horribly self-indulgent. So I digress.
It is remarkably bittersweet that half the world can tastefully remove itself from global pain. It can sit back into its comfortable homes and change the channel when the African children with stomachs distended from hunger interrupt their sitcoms. For all that we do, there is still all that we could be doing, but ignorance, cowardice, and the basic, ever-present, human greed stand in the way of many. Yes, there are the few who strike out to support a world that seemingly crumbles around us, but they are not enough. When I think of my future career, like many others, I am torn. There is the path that would lead to wild success, to obvious wealth, to comfort in my bubble, and then there is the uncertain path of aid.

What if we, the university students deciding our futures, took the second path as Robert Frost so often wishes he had at graduations. What if the lawyers worked pro-bono more than pro-wealth, the doctors without borders, and myself, a student of society, did something, anything, to burst the bubble?
Well - what if?