Four church bells ring out, hitting the wall rather hard and making it apparent that it was time to gather for a prayer in the main-building of a religious center. Three ‘officials’ of the church step out, yelling at the top of their lungs so that the kids alongside their parents would hear and gather inside. Two hours of prayer passes by, the ceremony a special gathering of friends, families, and other various groups united under a common cause. They sit and talk, enjoying the company of others, flashing there smiles at one-another, the best of each personality shown as far as I could see. They give up their time, their efforts and labor to make this gathering possible, to spend time with others, a noble venture. Yet one person, appearing from the blackest walls of the room, has to question this nobility. He walks by, a white-bag in hand, requesting people throw in money to be given to the poor. I look up to my parents, too young to have any of my own money yet still wondering: what do I do?  I watched my mother shake her head in solemn, and simply stare as the bag comes by, not moving any bit of her body. The bag leaves our sight rather quickly, and I look up again, puzzled. She simply responds, “Don’t worry about it, we’ve done enough.” I was of course too young to understand any truth, so the reply was fitting. Yet as I would come to know in the future: my parents felt there sacrifice great enough already; they had, of course, missed an entire day of work and came out just for me. They saw no incentive to donate; the same ideal that now determines today’s level of charity, the question: what’s in it for me? That very question serves to show humanity as selfish, and shows a disconnect to the real world today.
	When I think of what my parents said and then look towards my television, the portrayal of the casual High schoolers, I come to see that many of us, Americans, will only act if we are rewarded. Many High-Schoolers do volunteer hours, much of which are helpful no doubt, yet these hours originate as a need for a collage resume. Though these very high-schoolers show that they can do the work, and have the physical and mentality ability, they choose to or not to depending on the incentive offered. Some may argue that the work is done, nevertheless, yet we must question our future if this is what it takes to help ourselves. Buddhist philosophy tells of karma, in which doing a good thing will bring another. Yet the same ideal tells us that we must act of our own will, our own ‘goodness’, and that reward does not come in this world, but the after-line. In the fact, many of the same Buddhists believed that the feeling of doing good is the reward given until an afterlife. The Buddhists as a whole are more connected to the world, of course.
	At the same church described earlier, I can recall when we broke for food one afternoon – bits of spicy chicken and fried rice for all. At the same time, there were like dozens of homeless and poor individuals, watching us. Somewhere else there were starving souls on the brink of genocide. At our own school, hundreds die, who could be saved by a blood donation, yet we refuse to go simply because “there out of cookies”, as a friend once said. We allow others to suffer because of little rewards that bring nothing to the world. We [cannot] call ourselves humans if the thought of saving another life is something we don’t have priories. The act should be natural, and genuine, if we are to remain a united race, not just individuals, and in that incentives must not be given, for when they are we are no longer thinking of those priorities mentioned, but our own gains, our own wealth and well-being.
	From that day on, I did fear church, school, and life as a whole. Once, I saw a homeless man on a street, during which time my mind went to T-Shirts and free juice. I walked towards this homeless man, thinking of how much we stopped caring about him, how the ‘I’ overtook ‘us, how selfishness prevailed, and I pause. I finally arrive at the man, look down, and drop him some juice and a tax return sheet. “Here,” I say, “This is what you’re worth.”