A Voice

I’d prefer to drown my sorrows in something that will make me laugh and forget about tomorrow’s reality that looms on the horizon despising humanity.

Such attempt is not easy as on every occasion that I turn on the TV. I see war and strife, hatred and shame. The exploitation of the poor and the empowerment of the famous ones taking more and more, giving less and less of the resources to help the dying, though they hear the crying, they excuse themselves by shifting the blame, pointing their finger accusingly, declaring “This man is the reason for your pain”.

And do they go after, in hopes of eradicating a disaster mistakenly blowing up the wrong man, shooting who they thought was the strong man, who ironically was their only means of salvation. The cycle continues as brother attacks brother, and mother the fathers, intertribal conflicts abound, neighboring nations kill one another in hopes of justifying their own causes, not really interested in the well-being of the people, for in fact they despise and kill the people.
It all makes me sick!

I flip to another station but the image I just saw haunts my imagination as I can’t seem to figure out why we do this to one another. Why we hate so much on one another, why we are so jealous of one another. It’s not just the black race destroying their own, though they use guns; others use systems to keep their people in prison in fear that if they break free, they too might do the same thing.

They fear being taken advantage of and so instead of waiting for that opportunity they one up on the other, stripping them of their land, stripping them of their pride, stripping them of them of their mind, attempting to brainwash and reshape their thinking. That is until they those they wished to oppress begin to fight back. Now their rebels, now their renegades, now their terrorists cuz they weren’t down with your charades, refusing hunger and poverty, they too want to be somebody and reach for the stars, becoming that somebody that their mommy told them they could be.

What we fail to realize is that our humanity is bound up in the other, dependent on one another. When we sell our women and children just so we can get a fix or perhaps make those ends, we sell ourselves, we lose ourselves to the same horrors that we demanded them be submitted to.
When we slander the good name of someone else to puff ourselves up and stick our chests out, we in fact destroy not only them but our destiny as well. As now our conscience bears witness against us and is seared with shame, we can no longer go forward in good faith, now we must run amuck paranoid and disillusioned, lest someone wiser uncovers our foolishness.

Where did this all begin? I’ll tell you, right outside the garden. Right outside paradise, when Cain decided to take his brother Abel’s life because he felt threatened by his successes and ashamed of his own transgresses against the one who created him. Instead of getting his own mess right, and figuring out what he needed to do for his own life, he took the easy way route and laid his brother out. And when God has the audacity to ask where he was, he answered asking “Am I his keeper”. Well yes Cain, in fact you are your brother’s keeper. You are your brother’s, your mother’s, your father’s, your sister’s your neighbor’s, your enemies’, your leader’s keeper. Nothing has changed; all that was then back then is still the same. We are humanity’s keeper!


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