Jeff Hajny

    Animated cartoons have existed since the early 1900s. Since then, they have entertained children with anything ranging from goofy, over-the-top violence to comedic vaudeville-style performances to educational cartoons with an underlying message.
     Since I was little, I have been in love with cartoons. Being born in the earlier part of the 1980s, I have been treated with such animated greats as GI-Joe, Thundercats, He-Man, and my all-time favorite, Ghostbusters.
    These days, I still enjoy all of these along with the classics such as Looney Tunes and other cartoons my parents grew up watching. I would have to say that cartoons have changed my life.
     I have always lived by the philosophy of "Grow up, but don't grow old." This is why one can usually see me enjoying an episode of Family Guy, The Simpsons, or South Park rather than trying to keep up with CNN or watching one of those reality shows they have on television today.
     When one is watching the news, I feel it causes them to increase their stress to unnecessary levels. Why worry about what is going on throughout the world when there is nothing we can do about it?
     Another quality of cartoons which I have grown to love is my ability to identify aspects of my life to the characters within the shows. In each cartoon, there is a character whom reminds me of someone I have met before in my life. Oftentimes, these characters have the same solution to different problems that this person I met would have.
     Cartoons have given me a more positive outlook on how to live my life. They have taught me that there are people out there with stranger problems than what I am faced with every day.
     Another lesson I have learned from cartoons is to never stop viewing the world through the eyes of a child. Some of these cartoons we have been watching since we were little. Every time I watch these cartoons it reminds me of how I viewed the world at the time.
     The world we live in is a big, scary place which we have just begun to explore. We are all like children investigating our place in this great big place we call home. If we lose sight of this inner child, we may lose direction in our life. One way to never lose that inner child is to sit down in front of the television one night, and just think to oneself, "What would Bugs or Daffy do?"