Why not open your eyes? It might help you open your mind...

Hey Guys :)

I'm aware I haven't blogged in a while, but this one should be quite a good one...

This isn't going to be one of my normal blogs where I talk about my life happenings, this is going to be a blog with one big meaning.

I'm going to start with a question, and end with the same one...

When you're done, when you're dying, wouldn't you like to know you've made a difference?

This is something that has really hit home for me in the last week or so. It all started on the 25th of January 2011...

Rise Against released their first single from their brand new album, Endgame. The song is called Help Is On The Way, and it's about Hurricane Katrina/BP deep water oil spill. Straight away I knew Rise Against had gone a step further. A band that have always persisted in writing lyrics that seem to penetrate all feelings of 'Everythings Perfect', had just written a song that, little did I know, would change my life forever.

The next string was pulled on February 15th 2011...

Rise Against release their second single from their brand new album, Endgame. This new track is called Architects, and like Help Is On The Way, it hits home hard. I've never heard a song that gets so to the point. Architects is about this world being broken, and how Our generation needs to fix it. With lines such as...

'Do you care to be the layer of the bricks that seal your fate
or would you rather be the architect
of what we might create?'

These lines at the end of the chorus basically say, You can follow or you can change things. Tim McIlrath uses the word Architect as a way of describing someone such as Martin Luther King who has Designed the world we live in. Tim basically implies that there are none of these 'Architects' left in the world, no people to go against the grain to fight for a better way.

Later on the song breaks down to hear Tim McIlrath chanting the words:

'Don't you remember when you were young, and you wanted to set the world on fire?'

Which says that when you are young you want to change the world, you want things to be the way you think are right, but as you get older you tend to just accept the world for what it is and get on with it.

Now the fuse is lit on March 15th...

March 15th, Rise Against release their Endgame album. I skip the first two songs as they are the two singles that I have avidly listened to since their release. Then I hear the song which completely changes me forever. Make It Stop (Septembers Children). This song sings the stories of 5 homo-sexuals who killed themselves after being victims of discrimination in September 2010. The entire album had a huge impact on me, all with a very deep, real meaning, but this had the biggest effect.

Lets skip forward to Wednesday the 30th of March...

Tonight I am sitting on a cold wooden floor, with my loved Alexisonfire hoodie on and my iPod on with my headphones in my ears. The same noise is blaring out of my headphones into my ears as it has for the past 15 days. Tonight I decide I've had enough. Tonight I decide what my lifetime goal will be. Tonight, I decide that everything I will ever do from now on, I will do to make a difference. Although it's ambitious, and when you read this you'll probably click off straight away, my Mission, is to change the world.

I seem to be one of the only people I know that can open their eyes. I want to make everyone else open theirs too. I want you to open your eyes and minds to the possibility that what they are taught is wrong. What they're told is wrong. The fact there are two sides to every story. I am going to use probably a very controversial example now...

I'm pretty sure everyone of you who read this will consider our troops heroes. I'm almost certain all of you who read this will think that everyone our nation has ever opposed are the 'bad guys', well are they? To every other nation we have ever engaged in conflict in, I'm certain that the civilians have seen the people that fight for their country as heroes and our troops as the bad guys. Us and other nations aren't all that different. Everyone we have ever shot and killed has been fighting for what they believe in. People our troops have shot and killed have had Children and Families. People our troops have shot and killed have been people with their whole life ahead of them to go on and do something great. People our troops have shot and killed have had everything we have, so why are they worth less? How come shooting a man who your government has told you to shoot, that you have never met in your entire life, who you've never said a word to, who you have no motive toward killing, who has a family that will cry when they go home in a coffin with their nations flag on it makes you a hero, but if you shoot someone you do know, that you have said a word to, that has done something so horrific toward you you want to kill them, who also has a family just like the 'bad guy' makes you a criminal?

What's the difference? They're both murderers.

I think it's time that people started hearing it how it is, and that's what my band will start doing from now on. Telling it how it is.

I hope I haven't offended anyone, this is just how I feel.

So I'll ask again, when you're done, when you're dying, don't you want to know you've made a difference?

Cheers! x