As I spend most of my time here, it would only be natural that I chose my own room to perform my 30 minutes of observance. Also, since my roommates are rarely here, it would be pretty easy to remain undisturbed for enough time. Additionally, given the last few days of rain, it is the most accessible and comfortable regardless of the weather outside.

Aside from the aforementioned color scheme, given the layout of me and my roommates’ stuff, the room has a very casual air to it. Both of my roommates TVs sit on their desks, we all have our own personal wastebaskets as well as a bigger one for all of us to use. My desk tends to be cluttered with various assortments of papers, books, and packets with my blue and black accented guitar on its stand. I have a poster for Bleach above my desk, and one for Steven Universe above my bed. As far as things that caught my eye while observing my room, I noticed just how calm everything feels when only I am in here. It is quite soothing like a cold pillow. Additionally, my window acts as a sort of vision into three completely different views of life. On my side, obviously college students. Directly across from me, outside the window, is the highway. It takes all manner of people wherever they need to go. And lastly, outside my window and down: the homeless. While they are not in my room, they are in direct view from my window. They stay in various degrees of shelter (from clothes and sticks to a full tarp) in a light stand of trees below one of the four overpasses. I treat my room like home and enjoy it dearly, but this ever-constant split is the key reason I chose my room. This idea of three different life views in one area is the idea that drove my choice.

The societal issue that I can attribute to what I am seeing has to be my view of humanity in general from a lifestyle standpoint. As humans, we are never fully content in life as we can always want more, no matter how rich and successful we may be. My issue with this is how people’s views of others and themselves change their rate of contentedness. My illustration of this view of humanity is crabs in a bucket trying to escape at the top. To explain, crabs in a bucket will try to get out via climbing over other crabs, but most crabs will not let others escape and thus no progress is made because most are holding everyone back. Applying it to humanity is a little more complex as the goal outside of the barrel is being content with life. As most people in the world are not monks or have become content with their life, few are at the top or outside of the barrel. So as the average person climbs towards their natural goals to be content in life, obstacles (both the natural infinite want of goals and objects, and people or situations) keep them in the barrel; usually working for many years to be content with their life (if ever). If someone is rich or poor, as they still want more in life, they will be stuck in the barrel. My room’s area makes me think of this issue because, with me, there have been people I had to push past and ignore (or climb over) many people to end up in college. The same could be said for the countless car owners on the highway across from my window. Yet, with the homeless people outside my window, they were the ones who either were pushed past and climbed over, or fell down to the bottom of the barrel by uncontrollable circumstances, or themselves. They have little hope of getting up from the bottom, but they can.