What Binds Us Together
There has been a steady, but constant dimming of the bright light of hope. Fear and hate, fueled by ignorance and greed. The inability, or perhaps, unwillingness to empathize and understand those who look or think differently. The echelon of the rich leeching from those struggling to break their many chains. Instead of relying on our sisters and brothers, the very people in which we walk side by side with, we curse their names. We point fingers and allocate blame and vitriol. There’s a poison spreading. An unseen miasma leaking into the minds of men where it plants seeds of distrust. Seeds of rage. Seeds of despair. Until one day those seeds mature and bloom into all-consuming hatred. The roots go deep to the heart; gnarled, spindly things which wrap around all those ideals we hold dear and precious, and warps what we once knew to be true. What we thought to be true. The difference between right and wrong, and all the grey in between. In that grey – in the complexity of what it means to be human – where we make our most difficult choices. It’s where we find victory. It’s where we find defeat. It’s where we suffer to find those most sought after answers. It’s where we find compassion, and most importantly, growth. Yet, that grey seems to be fading – slipping away, like the ever-retreating beauty of a star strewn dusk. All that remains is dark and light, leaving no room for just how complicated it is to make the “right choice.” And so when we reach out our hands for the truth, our fingers only close around smoke and ashes.
In the dystopia which follows, we look across that barren landscape – one which had been brimming with promise – and we ask “Where did we go wrong?” When did our hearts become that of stone? When did the light of love and kindness and empathy become forsaken for the poisonous fruit of apathy? Had the sun been setting this whole time, and we were blind to it? Was there a way to suspend the inexorable encroachment of a starless night?
We basked in the sun’s light. Soaked in its loving arms of warmth. Faces tilted to the boundless sky, it was all too easy to ignore the cracks beginning to appear at our feet. When the confidence of our foundation was tested, we bound together, arm in arm, voices raised to the heavens. Yet the ground had already begun to crack and falter. And as our world began to sunder, and the earth erupted, what was left in its wake were dividing walls. Those neighbors who we looked in the eye with compassion had become the enemy. We could not see them beyond these new walls. What we could not see, what we could not understand, became a darkness breeding only fear.
There’s a cacophony of new voices now. A chaotic chorus of ideals shouted at one another from beyond those walls. Where – briefly – we had joined hands and sang the same songs of hope, now the chaos of an uncertain future remains.
Nothing links us humans together more than being human. What is left for us, if we so willingly break that which binds us together?
