The Change.

I was only 6 years old when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. I didn't really know anything about it; I didn't know anything about the message it was supposed to convey; I didn't know what a "terrorist attack" was. I did know, however, that it shook my mom like I had never seen before.

My maternal grandfather lived just outside the city. While my mother and her father were estranged at the time, it still hit a little too close to home. In a way, I think it's what spurred their reunion just a short time later.

When this song and video came out, I remember watching it once with my mom. Just once. She couldn't stand to watch it or hear it more than that. She absolutely loves the song, but it was just too much. I heard the song off and on for the next few years.

Ten years later, I looked up the song again. It speaks to me more now than it ever has.

As I take more and more classes that challenge my ideas of the state of this nation and this world, I realize more and more that we, as individuals, need to take a stand. It's easy to get frustrated with all the things going on right now: with the recession, with the situations of loved ones, and the list goes on. Things are changing quickly...we need to show the world that it won't change who we are.

That through it all, we have hope for a brighter tomorrow.

If we don't, then we're just another agent in the vicious cycle we call the ways of the world.