Blank pieces of paper have the potential to change the world. Or, at the least, they can change lives. They can serve as the platforms upon which stories are launched. They can form the foundations of tales so ugly, so wrenching and painful, that callous men who don’t cry even when children die convulse in uncontrollable sobs.
If you own a pen and a piece of paper, or if you have a computer and a keyboard and willing fingers, you can change the world. Simply express the truth and invite others to listen and act accordingly.
It takes courage, courage beyond the capacity of most men and women. But the power rests with each of us.
Properly framed and executed, a call to end the grotesque murders by ISIS/ISIL could produce results tomorrow. But that call must acknowledge that blame is a fog that touches all of us. Properly framed and executed, a call for everlasting world peace could succeed.
I speak as if I have hope. I have no hope. Humankind never considers extinction applying to its own. I believe we, like species before us, will succumb to our failure to response to the environment the way we could, and should. It will be our undoing.
I don’t know when. Fifty years. A hundred years. A thousand years. It is coming.
So much hope is lost in looking at history. We know how we behaved in the past. Must we always behave the same way?
My mood switches between depression and delirium. I see destruction and delight. What is it, what is it that we’ll eventually see?
I don’t know. Odds are high you don’t know, either.
