Wake Up Call!

Have you ever gotten a ‘Wake up call’ in your life? Not the typical alarm clock that wakes you up for school or work, but the kind of call that knocks you off your feet and you realize that you need to get back up, only this time as a different person.

Around 3 minutes ago my brother called me. He asked me a few questions and after hearing my answers he called me dumb. Stupid, dumb and unaware. And I completely agree with the last word. He told me that in a couple of years you are going to be 20, well of course I knew that already, and if you are going to be as unaware then as now, you’re career and your ambitions are going to go down the drain. I couldn’t agree more.

He told me I should read more, I told him I already do, I just read ‘The Notebook’ last night, and he said what I meant was read the newspaper. Get to learn about political affairs, about what’s going on in the world. 20 years from now what Lady Gaga did or Selena Gomez said about Miley Cyrus won’t even matter. Again, I couldn’t agree more.

He went on telling me that I should start writing, he said he knows that my mind is full of ideas, thoughts and feelings, and he remembered how a year ago I was addicted to writing, but then I just stopped. Why? Even I don’t know. He said I should resume that addiction of mine. It will do me good. I had to agree with him on that as well.

He went on giving me numerous examples of what I do in my daily life is a huge waste of time, some of them being Facebook, YouTube, Games such as Farmville, Hotel City, in other words games that involve no thinking skills but rather all it involves is clicking…clicking and clicking. He said if I keep this up, I will be nothing but a girl trapped in the social networks, without a job, one who lost all her creativity and all she cares about is her vanity. He thinks vanity should be outlawed. That scared me.

He started off giving me more examples thinking I wasn’t convinced enough and that maybe it was really hard to get something past this thick skull of mine. And I said ‘Okay, I get it! I’ve gotten the wake up call!’ and he said ‘I’ve given you the wake up call numerous of times Maheen, but you just go back to sleep every time.’ This time again, I knew he was right.

Out of 7000 million people around the world 500 million people use Facebook. If you take out a zero from the 7000 figure thinking that that accounts the countless kids and babies in this world who do not have a Facebook account yet since they barely don’t even know what Facebook is, and the old folks who are oblivious of the internet let alone Facebook. Or the uneducated people who are still struggling with learning how to use a computer. We are left with 700 million people. Taking out 200 million from that figure for all those poor people who don’t even have enough money to buy the basic necessities such as food and water to stay alive and happy, let alone own a laptop or a computer. We now end up with 500 million; the exact amount of Facebook users. I, being one of those million users, now beg to differ. Is this my way of being different? I realized I spend hours within a day upon Facebook, and how in the world has it ever helped me? Well, of course it has helped me keep in touch with my friends all over the world, but we all know how Facebook addiction is, you use it even when there is nothing to do on it.

I just got my wake up call, better get yours too before its too late.