Prodigal Journey

I just returned from a one month journey in the US from Philly to Southern Cal and back and phew was that enlightening.  People differed immensely from state to state while still retaining a distinct American flavoring. I met lots of great people throughout all the locales.  One common thread throughout all the areas and peoples I met was their dissatisfaction with the current system and their strong hope that something better was coming along soon.  I usually echoed the people's sentiments right back towards them as my research on myself and others had yielded a similar state of mind within myself for a time.  People's complaints went from anything as above them as the banker's blatant disregard for other people to just a general sense of disappointment with how their own life had turned out.  Many of these downtrodden folk related how they were imprisoned in their current sad state of affairs by someone outside themselves, be it the bankers, the government, Big China, or their neighbors.  No one seemed to be able to hold their-self in anyway accountable for their current place in life.  It seemed as if many of these people were waiting for some kind of savior from outside themselves to pull them out of their misery.  It began to feel to me if everyone pulled themselves up by their own shoelaces while sharing what they have of themselves to give with others the world would be able to attain a more self-actualized existence than the present collapse and the circular blame game that trails closely behind it.  Whose going to save us from our problems but ourselves? We can't help anyone else unless we first help ourselves.