Needless to say, I have no idea why Highlights Magazine was created.  I am sure that will become more and more evident as you read this.  But, what I do know about Highlights Magazine is that it changed the course of my life.

So, there I was, six years old, sitting at the dentist’s office.  Bored with weeble-wobbles (or whatever those awkward little wooden people were called) and no longer challenged by the task of putting triangle blocks through triangle holes and square blocks through square holes, I was looking for a new challenge.  So I moved towards a more mature approach to killing time before being killed (I guess I failed to mention I hate the dentist).  I was going to browse a magazine.  I grabbed a Highlights Magazine and was forever changed.  I was introduced to the complex world of critical thinking.

Have you ever wondered where you developed the ability to compare and contrast?  My guess is Highlights Magazine, but you just didn't realize it.  I know that's where I learned it.  Flipping through the pages I stumbled on to the greatest thing I had ever found (and I had found many amazing things by the age of six).  I found a section of the magazine that showed two eerily similar pictures, but there was always something funny about one of them.  On one side is a joyful jungle scene, filled with monkeys swinging on the vines and branches in the rain forest, reaching for a cluster of bananas with their tails.  On the other side, a much more awkward depiction, there is a rhinoceros miraculously air-born amidst a trail of broken limbs and falling leaves.  What is he after?  Like the monkey, he is after a cluster perched high in the treetops.  But this is a cluster of shoes.  Yep, shoes.  It was pictures like this that helped me understand the power of human reason.

Now, some 18 years later, I am once again looking at two pictures (figuratively, of course).  On one hand I see the world. To date, nearly 25 million people have died from AIDS [link], every American is born with a 25% of going being divorced [link], every day thousands of people's bodies are rendered helpless to various forms of cancer [pdf], and men, women and children are being abducted from their homes and families and sold into slavery all over the world (yes, human trafficking exists even in the United States) [link].  Yet, people all over the globe aspire to something better; they paint pictures of a better time.  Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims all look towards something better.  Regardless of religion, race, or social class, there seems to be an ingrained understanding that there is something better.  There is a collective understanding that we are the rhinoceros awkwardly grasping for a cluster of shoes.

Once again it is time for comparing and contrasting.  But, this time we are going to look at the differences between the fictitious Highlights Magazine scenario and our sobering reality.  What is the difference between the two?  Well, they both have an idealistic image contrasted to a ridiculous version of itself, so that can be ruled out.  Both deal with reality.  Monkeys, rhino’s, bananas, trees, and shoes exist just as much as AIDS, divorce, cancer, and human trafficking exist.  What is different?  Hope.  One is filled with hope and the other is utterly void of the concept.  But this is where it gets good.  The magazine is the one that is hopeless.  You can't do anything but circle all the wrong things.  When you're done, you close the magazine and walk away (likely to have your gums scraped my a dental assistant).  But we don’t have that option with our world and its disjointed state.  And I'm thankful that we can't.  We have the ability to change the ridiculous picture, to re-align our fragmented existence with something much, much, much better.  Regardless of where you are or who you are, you can make the world a better place.