An Essay Relating Quotes From “Where is the Love” To My Life and The World
April 24, 2012
8th Grade English
Mia Perry
The year 2007 was the first time that I heard “Where is the Love” by the Black Eyed Peas, an influential song about troubles and inequality in society. Being a 3rd grader, I did not fully understand the powerful lyrics of the song and their meaning. The Black Eyed Peas writing this song with such a relevant and valid message was
not an accident. While recently reading through the words of the song, I realized that they are easily applicable to events that I have occured in my own life and to the world today.
“Wrong information always shown by the media, negative images is the main criteria,” is one line of “Where is The Love” that can relate to an experience in my own life. At Valley Forge Military Academy’s summer camp in 2008, a marksmanship counselor forgot to put the on lock his gun, and he accidentally shot himself in the leg. Although I was not there when the incident happened, another counselor, Jemma, was telling me about this when I saw a news helicopter overhead, flying and soaring across the clear sky. That lunch at Mess Hall, the most recent news was being displayed on the large TVs, which caught every camper’s attention. One of the stories was titled “Counselor Shot”, and they described the situation as an insane murderer who somehow got onto the campus and attempted to assassinate this counselor, and they showed a policeman strolling beside and helping the stumbling man, the injured marksmanship counselor. While the story was being told on the news, some campers booed because everyone knew about what had actually happened. After this experience, I realized that sometimes the media bends information to attract more viewers to the negative happenings in society today. Even though this song was not written in 2012, it can still be related to problems today.
Another quote from Where is The Love?, “Most of us only care about money makin'
Selfishness got us followin' the wrong direction” relates to worldly issues. On the weekends, I sometimes watch television and notice commercials about impoverished families in the continent of Africa. I wonder why there are so many wealthy people who don’t seem to pay very much attention to the people in need. It seems to me that currently people only care about getting more things for themselves instead of helping others, which also reminds me of selfishness. Most of the people that I know from Pine Point aren’t selfish, but when I visit other places around the world, people seem shocked at how much I share with others. I never realized that outside of school --the safe place where I learn and grow-- things are significantly different. Often times selfish people believe that no one should be allowed to share the privileges that they have, admiring and enjoying things that they keep away from anyone else who might need one of the same items. I wonder how different the world would be if selfish people changed their ways and we all did our part in helping others.
Sometimes I marvel at how difficult life seems as a human. For animals such as deer, they seem to care and look out for any other deer that they come in contact with. They help each other especially through tough times finding food and shelter. These animals do not appear to have problems with each other, and I am curious about what makes humans so discriminative against others.
Self Assessment
1) One writing issue that I am continuing to work on is writing interesting concluding sentences for each of my paragraphs.
2) One possible strong point that I noticed in this essay is the varied lengths of sentences throughout the 2 body paragraphs.
3) One possible weak point in my writing could be my appositives. Since I am new to writing appositives.
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