The conflict between Palestine and Israel is extremely complex, so I am approaching it from a position of humility. 

I want to talk about the “savagery” vs “civilization” narrative I have seen in countless social media posts

Many have conveniently adopted the “savagery” vs “civilization” narrative. “Savagery” is when fanatics shoot people on cameras and drive half-naked, beaten women on the streets. “Civilization” is when a rocket launched by a drone levels a residential building. In the first case, the camera is going to be stained by blood, in the second one, the camera lens is far enough to not see the crushing of the heads and tearing of the limbs. The violence done by “savages” is real, evoking, close; the violence done by “civilization” is unreal, distanced, and easy to ignore. The first one is called terrorism, the second one is a long-range precision strike weapon. Terrorists cause deaths, civilization causes collateral damage. Terrorism is abominable, the strategic operations carried out by the civilization are easy to ignore. Gaza is an experiment of locking 2 million people on a tiny patch of land and forcing them into poverty, lack of basic human needs, and inability to flee. The generations raised in this chaos and destruction become an excellent recruiting base for extremist organizations like HAMAS. Searching for the right or wrong amid this war seems pointless to me. We as humanity are collectively guilty of terror like this occurring, and we as humanity are collectively responsible for creating a better future.

PC: https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/07/96/45/84/320x180_cmsv2_9ae07b19-cd5a-5d4b-a74d-468ab31ce2c7-7964584.jpg

Searching for a way to manage my relationships, curricula, activities, toilet time, and college apps, I have been bombarded with countless time-management tips: Eisenhower matrix, Pomodoro techniques and a bunch of other [techniques] that take more time to pronounce than actually save.

Oh yeah, you also need to create a to-do list for every single time you [something generic], set a timer for using the bathroom, and wake up at 3:42 am. If you do all those things, you can finally meditate in the morning, stay on track with 6 AP classes, excel at those college essays, watch an hour of TikTok, and read 20 pages of the book, watch an hour of TikTok. And afterwards burn out and die.

Restart.

I hope you first tested this for yourself, reduced your life-span by a couple years from sleep-deprivation and are now open for suggestions.

First, make your bed. Then, clean your room and throw away all the junk. Next, you need to clean your head of all the junk that you are consuming. Human attention is the gold of today’s age. Corporations are creating more innovative and cunning ways to take it away from you. And you are happy to let them do it.

There is a finite amount of time in a day, and instead of giving it away, you need to set your priorities. What really matters to you? Focus on it. Everything else is junk. You should be hungry for your time. You should not want a single minute to go to waste because it will never come back.

Think about all those dreams that you have. All the things you want to do. Do you think you will ever get to them if you watch TikTok or check your messages every five minutes?

To manage the craziness of my senior year, I had to get rid of YouTube, avoid social media, and focus only on things that matter to me: people, education, sports. Make sure that when you close your eyes, you do not regret what you did today. Because the way your day goes, is the way your life will go as well.