This world as we have known it ended slowly, so much so that we never saw it coming. Crumbling at our feet, we stepped over the ruble as mere pebbles on the road. In the chaos we searched for clarity but could not quite see through the smoke filled air. Complicit in the sound of sirens, like a bell tower ringing with each new death. This is our new normal. News of lives lost and detention camp cruelty almost ricochets off of our consciousness like rain to a roof. You can’t help but wonder when it will all cave in from the weight, knowing it was never built to hold.
Our world ended before we knew it was coming. And this new world remains foreign, like a waking nightmare, all we can do is try to grasp for some sense of the realty we once knew. Holding onto hope, a feeling that is all but forgotten like a distant memory of a time beyond the one we find ourselves in now. How did we get here?
To a place where divisiveness reigns supreme, where facts are declared fiction, where we have to beg for some sense of morality. How did we become so lost?
Stuck in a perilous battle between what is right for all vs. what is right for one. Morality should not be a question. Selflessness should not be challenge. We should not be here in this moment but we are, planted firmly with our heads in the sand.
I like to believe we are capable of so much more and that perhaps one day we will find our way back to a time where we were led by the syllable of change, driven by love, captivated by compassion. We used to be someone, something more than this. We were never perfect but we were striving to be better than our forefathers were.
Holding onto hope, we used to cry at the scene of devastation. Now we cry at the feet of corporations.
This new world is not really new at all. It’s who we’ve always been, masked behind our capitalistic endeavors, I guess it just seemed better when we hid these parts of ourselves.
As hopeless as this time feels, I refuse to not be broken by it, I prefer in fact. Because at least if this time breaks me I’ll feel human. I’ll feel something. Because 1,000 deaths a day is not normal. Ash filled air is not normal. Destruction is not normal. Enabling Fascism is not normal. Placing immigrants in detention camps as they are subjected to unmeasurable cruelty in a nation built by immigrants is not normal. Letting our democracy perish in the fire is not normal. Nothing about this time is normal.
Our world is ending…this world as we know it and we see it as normal. Another casualty of a particularly cruel year. When it’s all said and done, all we can do is hope that this new world shows us more compassion than we’ve shown to ourselves.
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