People are sick and dying, someone just lost their loved one, there's a natural disaster, someone is living in fear for their life.
But the sun still rises every morning, the waves crash at the shore, mothers kiss their babies, a couple is getting married, the stars still shine, flowers still bloom.
I know all of it. I feel all of it. It does not weigh on me as hard as others, but it weighs on me and all of us just the same.
I do not have to live through all of it. But I have to wake up every morning knowing that I am completely powerless in helping people who deserve my help. I have to hear the news report that someone has died in a country miles from mine, from a war they did not agree to be a part of.
A young guy, who was about to go to college, have the best years of his life, lies dead in the ground with bullet wounds so fresh, blood is still coming out of them. Bullet wounds from bullets that were shot so loud, he still hears ringing in his ears in the Heavens. Bullets that were so loud his mother hears them in the middle of the night to wake her from her sleep. With bullets so real, they shot Trayvon Martin. With bullets so real, they shot Jordan Davis. With bullets so real, they have shot countless, nameless, faceless, forgotten souls. Real souls which lived in real bodies.
Real bodies that rot. That rot into our ground and become the fertilizer that sprout the seeds in every living person because we cannot rest until we are dead. And even when we are dead we will be the fertilizer that plants the seeds in the living. Because spirits do not die. Bodies die. But their spirit can be found in all of us. Because what ever short amount of time they spent on this Earth, 18 years. 17 years. 17 years. was not spent in vain.
If 3 different mothers have to say "I had a son," have to say "he had such a bright future," have to say "but he's gone now" for the rest of their lives, then I commit to keeping their names on my lips. In my heart. For the rest of my life.
I hope you know that without you, this world is a significantly different place. Who knows. Years from now you could have been kissing someone who ended up falling in love with you. Years from now you could have been the voice in the dark that saved a life. Years from now and years from now and years from now but you do not have years from now.
Years ago. You have years ago. And I promise that 17 years ago and 17 years ago and 18 years ago your mother did not bear a son just to have him die. So you leave legacies. For years from now. So that years from now, I can bear a son and know that he is safe. I know that he is safe, unarmed. I know that he is safe wearing a hoodie. I know that he is safe blasting his music in a car. You do not have years from now. They were stolen from you.
It will take the right people to steal them back, but once they are rightfully returned, those years will be given to little boys and girls who will exist years from now.
In my Philosophy class last year we were asked why there are natural disasters, if there is a God or a higher power, why does he allow people to feel such excruciating pain, why put us through it?
I believe it is because without chaos we cannot know peace.
My cousin asked me when I was 10, "If everything is red, is anything red?" And I said yes, but she said no. She said that if everything is red, nothing is red because it is just a constant state of being.
I am not saying that we are lucky to know the pain of losing someone. Or that a man must look at his own son's casket so that the world can know what goodness feels like when it comes. But it is perhaps a little more tolerable to know that our pain is not in vain. That it is shared and it is so shared that we feel compelled to seek peace.
It is perhaps the smallest consolation to the loved ones of Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin that their immense pain, that the death of a person they loved dearly, could bring about in the world, a reality where that pain turns to peace. Where because of that pain, we can know what it feels like to live without it.
That when we see this picture
we know what it means to be in anguish. This picture haunts me because that very energy that his father was feeling, looking at that casket, is still radiating through out the world today. It is not gone, and it is not meant to leave, not until the wrongs are made right. Not until every human being can feel like their lives are just as valuable as the next guy's.
It's time to stop wishing for a better world, passively feeling bad for people, and ignoring their anguish as if you don't feel it. You don't have to be spiritual or religious to know that when you look at that picture, something changes inside of you. I don't want to be someone who brushes off another human being's hurt, I want to actively be someone who contributes to the good in the world, not someone who passively receives. I want to be a part of the equation that converts pain to peace because you cannot destroy or create energy, but you can change its form.
The best of vibes as always and my deepest love and consolation to Mike Brown's family and friends as they have just spent their second month without him,
Priya
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