Navigating a busy life full of distractions and disappointments, it's easy to forget about the world around you. Unwholesome diets and lack of empathy for the environment plague society today because of grueling work hours and the desire for a fast-paced city lifestyle. As a result, consumption itself is now controversial. I'm aware of my wastefulness and often feel a strong desire to change. So why haven't I? Restructuring daily routine can feel like a break-up. Ushering out comfort and familiarity is harsh, but sometimes it's necessary - a hurdle I've often struggled to leap. Throughout my daily routine, I consume a lot of stuff. My day begins with breakfast: Nutella on toast, a smoothie, and a banana. The Nutella spread comes in a glass container and the smoothie in a plastic bottle. I then brush my teeth using toothpaste encased in a plastic tube, spray myself with antiperspirant from an aerosol can, comb mousse through my morning mop from a plastic container

I expect that many young adults today, like me, often lie awake at night worrying about their place in the world. It seems the older we get, the more information we soak in, endlessly shaping our perception of reality and fueling our desire to be recognized and appreciated. Trying to interpret the grand scale of life in the modern human world, in my opinion, is what often makes us feel irrelevant, insignificant and unworthy of existence. Here's some food for thought: Growing up, Generation Y absorbed an immense amount of information as a result of the Internet. You’d think that with this revolutionary tool, people would band together and achieve extraordinary things. In many so ways we have. There are endless opportunities for betterment that come with the emergence of the Internet of Things. Yet in everyday society, social pressures continue to turn us against one another. With a rapidly increasing human population, the fight for significance is higher than ever. Image craft

"A white has no superiority over a black, nor a black has any superiority over white, except by piety and good action." - Prophet Muhammad. NO PLACE FOR BIGOTRY First impressions lay the foundation for any potential relationship. Everyone is different, with a unique perspective on life. But if there's one trait that never fails to dampen my first impression of a person, it's racism and discrimination. From a millennial perspective, I am tired of bigotry and its detrimental drain on society. It feels outdated, like it should exist only in history, yet it continues to flourish more than ever, especially in social media today, which has given bigots a platform to spread hatred with guaranteed anonymity. Facebook and Twitter have become tools for discriminatory expression. The recent terror attacks in Belgium, Turkey, France, Burkina Faso and Pakistan – not to mention the endless horror inflicted on the people of Syria and Iraq on a daily basis – hav

DIFFICULT TO DEFINE One thing I will always remember about being a kid, was my insatiable appetite for familiar comfort. I despised being pushed out of my comfort zone, and wanted everything to remain the same. I didn't enjoy branching out and meeting new people, and "sick-days" at home from school were cherished. As a teenager, I even mastered the ability of deceiving the receptionist at school and calling in sick, just so that I could sit at home and bask in the comfort of familiarity. Being sent off to school camp used to terrify me, as did spending the night in a strange bed at a friends house, or having to showcase my amateur athleticism. Something always pulled me back to simplicity and comfort; a place people often refer to as 'home'. At twenty-four, I haven't really changed, except for the fact that my comfort zone has vastly expanded over the years, and for the most part, I've come to understand that distance from comfort is the essential i

"The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life, is the source from which self-respect springs.” DOUBTFUL BY NATURE I began writing this post back in October when I experienced high levels of anxiety due to oncoming change. I want to help others to understand that feeling anxious and oppressed in life is normal, and more-or-less adjustable. The source of my anxiety springs from the fact that to me, life can seem boring and meaningless doing the same thing over and over again. Therefore, when tasks become trivial, and motivation slips away, I often feel a strong urge to make a change, and experience something new to brighten my surroundings and open up to a new perspective. But this goes completely against my worrisome, doubtful nature. Change has its upsides, but it can also leave you questioning yourself and your motives. The worst, most painful result of change, is regret. I have always relished the idea of pushing myself beyond my boundaries, but be

IS THIS WHAT WE WANT FOR THE IMPENDING GENERATION? Driving to work can often seem like a grueling task – sitting in traffic amidst thousands of other busy-bodies navigating their way through an increasingly dense metropolis. Human population has increased exponentially during the last 200 years. During the 20th century alone, human population in the world grew from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. A recent report by the United Nations Population Division, predicts that human population could peak at 11 billion by 2100. Is this the world we want for our future successors? "With smaller populations, we can have increasing living standards per head but less consumption, more space, better lives, smaller impacts on the planet, and more room for wildlife." – Simon Ross, CEO of UK-based campaign group Population Matters. POPULATION BRIEFING The world population is currently estimated at around 7.349 billion, according to the medium fertility estimate by the United Nations D

Auckland vs. Dubai "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose." Like many privileged kids, I have lived most of my life in a comfortable suburban bubble. Until I was about 19, I never gave much consideration to the rest of the world, and only now do I truly appreciate the things that I once so carelessly took for granted. Somehow my mindset changed during recent years, (I think studying had a lot to do with it) and I decided it was time to implement some change. I recently relocated halfway across the world for a job. I didn't know a single person where I was going, and I had a month to plan an abrupt relocation. Even though it sounds somewhat bizarre, as if finding the right job is really worth moving away from your home for, personally it has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. Some of us have it, and some of us don't - that longing to experience more than what is familiar and comfortable. For