One of the hardest obstacles in life is figuring out who you are.  It takes time and thought to really get into the place where you want to be.  People struggle with this issue everyday and some never seem to get it right.  Being a teenager and trying to discover who you are can be harder than any other period in life.  Today, teens have to put up with a constant barrage of advertisements, drugs, sex, and their own insecurities, not to mention hormones.  Now-a-days in the good ol' US of A, the "perfect" female is sickeningly skinny, dumb-as-a-door-nail, and puts on too much eye liner.  With so much to live up to, the average teenage girl can't really think about the environment, much less the issue of God.

I am a Taoist, 16 years old, and trying to get my grip on reality.  For those who have no clue what a Taoist is, I shall explain.  Taoism is a Chinese religion and/or philosophy.  It's pronounced Dow, much like the sound you would yelp after stubbing your toe on the dresser.  Taoism is probably most well known through the book, The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff (which, by the way, is an excellent read that I strongly recommend).  Before I get too deep into Taoism, I must state that this is my opinion, and doesn't represent the religion as a whole.  This is what I have gained from it and am still gaining.  The Tao translates to the "Way" which in essence is the Way of the Universe, nameless and formless, flowing through all beings.  It is both masculine and feminine and treats everything the same, staying neutral and not siding or gaining opinions.  It just is.  Taoists do not believe in God.  They believe that anything that has taken form or shape is part of Tao.  This includes animals, plants, and earth...the environment.  In Taoism there is something known as the Great Separation:  Long ago, before man can remember, everything lived with Tao.  Man was just another animal living contently in the lush earth and with the other creatures, not thinking of them as inferior or superior but simply different.  Everything was peaceful and everyone was what they were, nothing else.  Gradually over time, man's ego began to grow and assert itself.  This caused so many problems that it was decided that man should go out into the world on his own.  The connections he had once had with the environment and the Tao was broken.  Now that he was cut off from nature, he could no longer understand the animals but only interpreted their actions; which went badly.  Man's happy life with nature was no longer and so he tried searching for happiness, and trying to obtain it, created stress.  Because he could not understand nature, he tried to manipulate it and change it to appease his thirst for happiness.

Today this thirst is not for happiness, but money.  Money makes the world go round and companies will do anything for profit, even decimating the very planet that gives them life.  But what are a few destroyed forests compared to a multi-million dollar mansion used by one person?  Human beings have come up with so many substitutions for joy it's impossible to count them all.  And in the end, does it really matter how many things you've owned?  Besides, isn't it the simple little things that make your day, like someone smiling at you or jumping in rain puddles?  With industrialism and materialism running rampant, we aren't realizing what is happening under our feet.  Global warming has finally become a serious issue, but there are still critics that say, "It's just a theory".  All things affect nature, but none as much as the human race.  Instead of just letting things be what they are, we have to process and package them into little bundles and ship them to supermarkets everywhere.  We've created a bubble for ourselves so far from nature that some people haven't even breathed fresh air.  We've forgotten to simply live, and in replacement, we run around in little circles wondering why the world is so messed up.

I'm not saying that Taoism could fix all the world's problems.  What I want to get across is that we need to do something.  Once I graduate from college, I will try my damnedest to make the public aware of how we're pulling the rug out from under our own feet.  I'm not sure what the solutions could be.  I'm not even officially and adult yet, but I know that with a little effort we could make things happen.  We need to step out of our comfort zones and realize that if we don't have the planet, then there could be no supermarkets, companies, or flat screen TV's.  People might say that we could just go into space, but let's face it, if we can't figure out how to save a planet, we'd probably end up screwing up space somehow, too.