Pandora's Box

Pandora's Box is a Greek myth about the age old saying "curiosity killed the cat." Zeus wanted a daughter so he told Hephaestus to make him one out of clay. Zeus sent his new daughter, Pandora, down to earth so that she could marry Epimetheus, a lonely man. But Zeus did not do this out of kindness for his new daughter or for Epimetheus. He did it for revenge. Zeus was angry at Epimetheus' brother Prometheus for giving people fire without asking Zeus first. Zeus gave Pandora a box with a big lock on it and the key to Pandora. Zeus hopped that either Prometheus or his brother would let their curiosity get the best of them and open the box but that is not exactly what happened. Pandora is the one who let their curiosity get the best of them and when she opened the box she let out all the evil in the world - envy, crime, hate, disease, and along with all these things, hope.

I think that the contents of the box hold the deepest meaning in this Greek myth. It is no mistake that with all those evil things that came out of the box, also came hope. Even though there was all this bad in the world, they still had hope. In today's times i believe that hope is needed to carry on during bad times. When a family member gets sick you still have hope that they will get better. When your country is a war zone you still have hope that things will be peaceful again. When you lose your job you still have hope that you will find some way to provide for your family.

An evil that I would like to squash is alcoholism. Alcoholism plagues this country and affects so many families, including my own and many of my friend's. My father is an alcoholic and I have witnessed firsthand how it has not only ruined his life but also torn my family apart. It is because of alcoholism that my mother and father separated. It is because of alcoholism that my half-sister's parents are no longer married. It is because of alcoholism that my grandparents have ironically both developed a drinking problem. During the Christmas holiday, it looks like I have the picture perfect family. The base of the Christmas Tree is overflowing with Christmas presents with Santa still to come, my younger sister and cousins are baking cookies with my Gramma, my Jogie and I stealing spoonfuls of the cookie dough while they aren't looking, my aunts and uncles sitting by the fire on the back porch. No one says anything while my dad is on his 4th glass of wine even though he "stopped drinking 5 years ago". Alcoholism puts a huge strain on my family but this is not to say that when I turn 21 I wont drink, because I will, I will just have to be careful because my father is an alcoholic. Because alcoholism runs in my family. 

photo credits: me; taken last Christmas on my grandparent's back porch