Bomb blasts, man slaughter, rape, gas chambers, gun shots, intentional fires, purposeful suffocation, and the list continues. Death, death, and more death. Everywhere we look, someone is dying, someone is fleeing, someone is taking his/her own life. No one is safe. No one is happy. This broken world of ours is full of broken people with broken hearts and broken dreams.
Fly like a kite, they tell you! Fly and reach for the sky, they said! This world is yours, they chanted!
Sorry, but I don’t want this world to be mine anymore. It was plenty okay when I was a little girl and all I could ever see were the rainbows and the luxuries of adulthood like red wine and fancy tea parties with my best friends. When love was a prominent emotion and hate did not exist. When there were no “bad” people except in movies and books…
But now, it is not fine in a world where blame gets thrown on scapegoats and violence is used as some sort of idiotic solution to counteract terrorism. I don’t want to soar in a sky where military air forces are stationed rather than birds and fluffy white clouds. I don’t want this world- where something so pure, like faith and religion, is blamed for the heinous deeds of ignorant terrorists who don’t value God’s creation.
What happened to the value of human life? What happened to empathy?
It is like this world has become despondent to death unless it directly slaps us in the face. And if we are lucky enough, we will survive to live another day, but if not that is all we got. And that is quite frankly, terrifying. It scares me to think that when explosives go off in another country, we decide to change the filter on our Facebook profile pictures rather than doing something of actual significance. It frightens me to hear stories of humans differentiating between humans purely on the basis of skin colour and ethnicity. Little does this world know, that at our core we are all the same. We are all human. If you can feel for yourself, how can you not feel for others? How can you not put yourself in someone else’s shoes and realize the extent of suffering they have endured? How can we, as a society, be so ignorant towards the dehumanization occurring within mankind!
Many are talking about closing our “doors” to refugees. Who ever said any of us owned this land? For in the matter of years we will all be 6 feet under the ground and none of this bullshit of “my land, my safety, (my selfishness)” will truly matter. I don’t even think we realize the impact of a statement like “closing our doors.” We are transforming ourselves into murderers by sending refugees off a cliff between life and death, we have their blood on our hands! Yet again, we choose to be ignorant towards the consequences of our thoughts and actions.
What happened to humanism? Is it purely just a philosophical concept with no resonating impact on reality or did ignorance, selfishness, and greed team up to extinguish the fire of compassion we were all born with? The compassion that arises from a simple human emotion called, love. Who killed humanism? Our despondency? The choice to not feel nor love?
So what kite will I fly and why should I fly it? What in this world is mine other than hate and suffering? To be upfront, I’d prefer to not live life than identify myself with this morbid face of mankind because I know I would choose to become despondent rather than to naively fly a kite in a world full of ugly-black crows.
But maybe it is this exact thought that is killing humanism. The human choice to become despondent towards everyday life. The human choice to give up on humanism for the pure reason of not knowing how to fix it. Perhaps it is all about re-evaluating one’s own perspective to give humanism the opportunity to once again flourish by taking a chance to attempt to create change?
And maybe creating change or the start of change is as simple as saying a little prayer.
So let us send a prayer out into the universe to restore our faith in humanity and protect all of mankind from the difficulties they may be facing.
Let us pray not only for the victims but for those responsible- for maybe it will do some good in awakening the love & light within their hearts. Let us pray for our broken world, full of broken people.
And let us send some love to Baghdad, Paris, Beriut, Mexico, Syria, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria & all of those countries also in devastating turmoil and instability.
Together, let us say a prayer.
Dear Malika,
This was a sincere slap back to reality. I hated the fact that all you said was true. I despised it. I had to read, then re-read. I wanted to believe that this was just another story, but I couldn’t. Not anymore; because it made sense. Like you said, no longer am I the girl who saw “rainbows and the luxuries of adulthood like red wine and fancy tea parties with my best friends.” I too, am appalled by the recent lack of humanity portrayed by groups of people- humans- that once too saw rainbows and luxuries. I too, am appalled by the ignorance of mankind. But, again as you mentioned, is that despair not what is causing such violent and dehumanizing actions?
Your piece really made me question my thinking: my point-of-views, my beliefs, my values: which I believe was your purpose behind it. While portraying your opinion, you were able to make us create, then re-create, then wonder, about our own.
And once again, your thought process and the ever-present compassion and love and unwillingness to give up inspires me. I wish to too one day be able to fully restore my faith in humanity. I will pray for that. And while I believe in acts of kindness that help define humanity for me, it proves difficult for me to see, after such grief, pain, and tragedy, myself believing in the good in everyone.
As well, I admire your use of the word “us” in this piece. It certainly gave me a sense of collectivity and us as fundamentally humans- contrasting your original short, sharp, definitive sentences.
Overall, I appreciate you making me think about my thinking, and about the consequences of our collective (sometimes admittedly selfish) actions.
With love,
Ayisha
Dear Ayisha,
Thank you for your praise and enlightening comments speaking to your understanding of this piece. It has made my heart warm to see that I’ve been able to evoke emotion within you and have given you the opportunity to reflect on the current and realistic circumstances we are living within.
May humanism live within all of us. <3
Yours truly,
Malika
Malika,
Very impressive and its to the point. I like it. I just admire it how you of all people would write something like this, you’ve always stricken me as a very caring person and not as cynical as you were writing this. Then again we do become different people when we write.
My only criticism is that you first spoke of taking action other than changing our FB profile to the colours of the flag of Paris (which by the way I completely agree with you on) but then on at the end you said “let us send a prayer”. It just struck me as rather odd, or maybe its just me, but we can feel sympathy and show moral support by changing our FB profile, but how different is a prayer, because we are chanting out to some force which we hope to make the world better. To me it just seems like the same thing, but then again this is me.
You spoke of the killing of humanism. I loved it, absolutely, it is really something that no one has had the time to look upon, In Carmen’s blog about war, it talks about war and loss, here you talk about selfishness, conceit and the evilness of our nature, the human nature and what it does to a world.
Though its rather cynical (your post) its true, these issues have to be seen and looked over and not shoved under the carpet.
~Nilave
Dear Nilly,
Thank you for your praise. I am only cynical because I care. I care deeply about what is going on and it affects me in ways no words can explain.
I would have to disagree with you when you say changing Facebook profile pictures are in the name of sympathy and offering moral support because it does not do anything. It is literally a selfish act to think about changing the filter of your profile picture in a time of such pain and heartache. Quite frankly it is a very superficial thing to do. Now I am not saying the intention to show moral support is wrong but the way it was done it absolutely pathetic. And instead of sympathizing we should be empathizing. Sympathy is a petty excuse to look down on the world rather than to understand it, in my opinion.
And a prayer, for someone like I, who spends hours praying everyday- a prayer withholds a lot of power. A prayer is pure and honest and is not just a form of hope. To someone who believes in God, a prayer holds a lot more significance than a Facebook profile picture does.
If we put things in perspective what holds more power- a Facebook profile picture or prayer? But in end I guess it depends on the person…
I don’t mean to respond in a harsh matter, but it is because I care so much. This care fuels a sense of passion and perhaps “cynicalism” that may come off offensively. If I did so, I sincerely apologize.
Thank you for your feedback,
Malika