I’ve said before that I am someone who looks for and seeks out change in the world. I think I ought to talk about that a bit. You know, the whole “change” bit. As strange as it might seem, it’s actually the timeliest concept I can think of right now. Change, as I imagine it, should be a habit.

There are a lot of people out there who hate the idea of change. This is perfectly understandable. Occasionally, we as a people just want to lie down in our nice comfy beds, in our nice cozy homes, in our amazingly familiar hometowns and not be disturbed. There is nothing particularly wrong with this; there is a time and place for not doing anything. Lying around all day only becomes a problem when we do it every day.

When we continually lie around doing nothing, we begin to live a life of habitual complacency; we cease to remember why we’re not doing anything and begin to think we ought to never do anything ever again.

It is our habitual complacency that has gotten us into the mess we are in as a country and as a nation. Somehow, educational inequity, opportunity gaps and hate have become our nation’s comfy bed, cozy home and familiar hometown. When we lie down as a society, we cuddle up with the problems we ought to be working to solve. If these problems were things that we only occasionally had to address, it would be one thing. However, these are not issues that come and go; they are things we have perpetuated to the point that we have forgotten that we ought to be doing something about them.

This is why we, as a nation, should have no fear of change. Change can only move us forward. Change can only mean getting off our butts and doing what we should have done a long time ago.

I never cease to be amazed at how many people talk about the good old days, as if the world were once full of sunshine, rainbows and majestic unicorns. This is ridiculous. We lie to ourselves when we think of the past in this light. Certainly good things have happened in the past, but the good that still needs to be done is far greater than what has been done so far.

Our nostalgia as a nation allows us to forget that we are now faced with cleaning up the messes that those “good old days” ignored. There is little to idealize about in the past. We have quite literally been there and done that, and it doesn’t seem to have worked out for us quite the way we wanted it to.

We have embraced our habits and some of us have even fallen in love with them. Even the most radical individuals of the late 60s and early 70s can now be found asleep in bed, oblivious to the world outside themselves. This is not to say that being radical is or has ever been, in itself, a good thing. What I am saying here is that embracing habitual complacency as we have is never a good thing, and that even those who vow to never fall asleep are found passed out in bed oblivious to the need to act.

Today, it is as if a significant portion of our nation has drunk the Kool-Aid and laid down to die. There is a cult of complacency in the United States, and like any other cult, it’s tearing our national family apart.

I’m hoping that we can break free of this cult of complacency which we as a nation seem to have joined. It is understandable that we have ended up where we are, but that does not make it all right. It would be a mistake ever to underestimate the ability of people to lock themselves away and ignore the world. However, I cannot say enough about how our tendency to ignore the important issues in pursuit of a superficial sense of happiness does not make our inaction OK.

When I say that I can’t understand the loud and boisterous voices yelling about how amazing our country is, it is not because I think we are such a horrible country. It is because I cannot imagine cheering on a nation that has neglected to pursue the principles it originally set out to achieve. When it comes to equality and peace, close does not count.

There is no pride in being a nation asleep. There is no amazing power in a flag that represents the complacency of millions. You can throw as many ribbons on the back of your truck as you want, but as long as you’re asleep at the wheel, it won’t mean a thing.

It seems the last thing that we hold onto in the throes of our fitful sleep is the “American dream.” The American dream is consistently beginning to resemble a nightmare. It’s about time we woke up and got to work; the alarm’s been going off for too long, and we cannot continue to hit snooze, expecting our problems to go away.