I’ve always avoided watching the news. The negative, disturbing events that most often get vast and obsessive media coverage tend to haunt me for days after I’ve let them seep into my psyche. It cannot be undone, I can’t hit the rewind button and jump over the messy, demoralizing parts.  Yet lately, having found myself with time on my hands, I have been reading the news on Flipboard. Initially, I was just skipping over the sad news stories but a couple of days in a row now, I found myself opening the story and reading about it.  It’s left me feeling like a guitar string that was pulled too hard and let go. The feelings of despair are reverberating through me and around me. I can’t shake it.

Here are some of the stories I read about:

• The President of the United States encouraging police brutality.
• A teenager who encouraged her boyfriend, also a teenager, to commit suicide.
• Increasing number of child deaths from being left in over-heated cars.
• Alarming number of deaths in Toronto from Fentanyl overdosages

I recognize that these are not new, that is, this sampling of inhumane, dumb as anything, despicable human behaviour has existed for as long as we’ve been around, only the accessibility to the news is heightened; however, that in itself is appalling! Should we not be making progress, rather than repeating, watching our race continue to repeat such abominable acts?

For one thing, we have come through decades of human rights demonstrations time and time again, achieved high ground, declared all humans to be equal, only to go back to square one where the man incharge of a nation is goading the people whose goal is to serve and protect, to rather do harm?! It’s unthinkable, alarming, and unconscionable!

Then we have a teenager, who encouraged her boyfriend to complete his suicide attempt, which he did, upon her insistence. A young man, on the brink of the rest of his life, was taken away from his parents, sister, friends…I cannot begin to imagine the horror for this poor family- it is permanent. The girlfriend too, if she realizes now her mistake and regrets it, there is no turning back. This life she encouraged to its end, cannot be returned. It’s gone. The permanence of death is not to be misunderstood.

I don’t even know how to begin understanding the phenomenon where 29 children have been lost to overheated vehicles, this year alone. In one instance the mother left a toddler and an infant in the car as punishment and both succumbed to the heat. It makes me scream inside, so loud that my soul feels hoarse. How is this possible? How can we allow this to go on?

Life, the greatest gift of all, has become a cheap, dispensable thing.  How did this happen and how can we undo it?  Human life is taken in a fit of rage, under the influence of drugs, on the grounds of war (religious, territorial, racial, etc.), to satisfy ones ego, due to irresponsibility, to get money, and so many other such insane and completely unnecessary reasons. How is it that in the last century, or two or longer we have become immune to such atrocities and unable to come up with a solution? We have found a way to transport oil in pipelines, thousands of miles from where it was found, send our race to the moon, work out a way to send information anywhere in a matter of moments, beat diseases that were unbeatable, change the gender of a person but somehow, all this collective brainpower has not manifested itself into a solution to prevent unnecessary death and reverse motion on high ground gained in human rights.

I am not myself so bright that I could cause such a solution or set of solutions to appear, but I could contribute. I do hope though, with all my might, that we start thinking about and each of us join our voices in a chorus to affect a change, where solutions are created and put into motion, so that lives are not unnecessarily lost and are instead respected, for this highly regarded gift is only here to stay so long before it turns to dust. Collectively, we can affect a change. If each person, everywhere, joined their voice together, there is no knowing what could happen. We could overcome all the tragedies of our times and times past, to truly make progress, as one race, the human race.

No matter where we are from, where we end up, we all started with with a body made of the same materials and we are all going to end in the same dust that covers this earth. The differences that cause us despair, are immaterial. Some day I hope we achieve oneness of thought on that. I hope humanity is headed towards all that is good and peaceful, I hope we cause that to happen. ❤️