There is so much hatred in this world today. Open and read any newspaper, watch the news on TV, or the internet, and you are immediately overwhelmed with negative stories, divisions and revisions. Movies, documentaries, religion, politics, all laced with hatred in their themes. We love our own, but these Moslems, Jews, Christians, evangelists, Buddhists, we hate them! These capitalists, communists, socialists, theocracies, we hate them! Fat people, short, skinny, disabled, athletic, we hate them! The same goes for music, for different cultures, literature: we don’t simply dislike anymore, we hate them! What the hell has happened to us humans, born with all the emotions, and in most cases, a sense of right and wrong? Where did the love go, the empathy, the love of neighbor, and country, and especially for each other? Where has it all gone? It would be easy to blame technology for most of it, since we can go online and spew hate without fear of being found out. But no, it has to be much deeper than that—a good excuse for our inexcusable behavior, but no. Love and hate have always been a part of our makeup, of our natural state, but lately it seems as if hate is taking over, everywhere. It’s not “I don’t like” anymore; it’s “I hate!”
A very special person died today, a mentor, a friend, a very decent human being. I held him in the highest regards, and I’m overwhelmed with grief at his sudden passing. When I think of him, I think of kindness, of straight talk, of a time that is now so far in the rear view mirror that it seems just a part of my imagination, not real, a mirage. Where have time and kindness and help for pain gone? Why is it that the humanity in us is slowly ebbing away? We used to be so good to each other, so neighborly and magnanimous in our sharing of the best of us with the rest of the world? Maybe it’s because of my grief that I’ve become so pessimistic, although I don’t think so! This sadness just makes it much more obvious—the suffering, the pain, the injustices all around us!
I wish I knew or believed that things will get better, but deep down I don’t think so. Unless we get a grip of ourselves, start being more open, start respecting each other, respecting property, respecting the differences between us, this hate and shame and darkness will just keep getting worse.
There’s no lesson here. My friend just died, and I’m very heartbroken, very sad.
“Ah love, let us be true to one another,
For the world which seems to lie before us, like a land of dreams,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor peace, nor certitude, nor help for pain!”
Matthew Arnold.
Glen