– sung to the tune of Express Yourself.

Look around you. Are you alone? You have two things that nobody else in the entire world, past or future, will ever have. No matter how good or bad things have been, you still have these things.

Your body and your life.

Do you care about your life? Why? Why not? Do you really feel like a waste of space? Do you believe you can change the world?

This world has done a great job of breaking us down. Making it feel like we will never get anywhere in life. Making it seem like nothing matters. There are certainly many acting like nothing matters. Can you really believe that nothing matters? That you could just disappear and nobody would notice?

So you do care!

Then act like it! Why disrespect yourself?

Have fun. Its good to have fun! Party! But you dont have to destroy your body or your future to do it. You can have more parties and more fun that way!

A little alcohol is fine – our bodies can handle it. But only once in a while. Not every day. And not so much you get sick.

Heres a novel idea. You have hope for a future. What about the person next to you? The one down the street? The one on the other side of the world? Do you know their story? Do you know what they have been through? Do you know the story of every person in the world?

Didnt think so.

Then why would you talk about someone else as though you do know everything about them?

Once you respect yourself, you start to realize that every other person around you deserves the same respect. Isnt it because of other people directly or indirectly putting you down the reason that you were unsure you were worth anything? So why do that to someone else?

How do we teach this? How do we spread the idea? Hard to say. Some public schools try, but the kids often think its a joke. Other public schools simply dont have time or money to try.

What about parents? Were all so busy, trying to make enough money just to get through another day. Being ground into the dust it seems like, the very picture of the hopeless.

But you parents do have one hope: your children. Your kids know you are stressed out and hurting. What they dont know is why. They dont know the hope you have that life will be better for them because of the work you do. They may not know that they are literally your hope.

And all it takes is for you to tell them. They dont have to know every detail of how your life ended up here. And you dont have to burden them with everything you want for them. But you can tell them that your life is already better because they exist. Because you give them worth, they are more likely to believe that they are worth something to themselves too.

All it takes is for you to tell them once in a while.