I got up this morning around 4:45, proud of myself for not having to stumble to the bathroom any earlier and only once after that. I negotiated my way back to some kind of almost, but not quite, state of slumber. Had a pretty good sit, checking the clock only once, amazed at how little time had passed. I made my coffee and walked over to my desk. Waiting for the coffee to become coffee, I fed exactly five dust specks of food to Jackie II, my red and blue, psychic Betta fish.
My engagement with the world begins when I flip open the mouth of my MacBook Air and a diarhea of odorless information greets my pathetically inquiring mind. First up, deleting the majority of emails, which are something even less than useless. I punch up my morning Zen quote from Tricycle Magazine and then read some hard to find news on a site called Daily Chatter. Editor is a nice guy, who gives a shit about news, just news. Occasionally, there is actually a personal email or two and I quickly answer them.
The curtain goes up when I officially punch into some of the news services to see what happened when I wasn’t paying attention during the night. Then, my heart stopped when I saw this photograph of a little boy in Yemen. 85,000 children under the age of five have died from starvation since the outbreak of war, only three years ago. 85,000 children under the age of five have died from starvation since the outbreak of war, only three years ago.
I could not look at the photograph for more than a second and I still can’t. This morning was one of our beautiful ones and the boy made me cry and heave uncontrollably. What is wrong with us? Do you know we supply the machinery to destroy an entire people, millions of them. The Saudi’s have a problem with them and those motherfuckers pay big cash for our killing gear. Do you know we have been at war with Afghanistan for something like seventeen years, at a cost of trillions of dollars and a degree of suffering that people like us can’t possibly comprehend?
Millions and millions of people have left their homes, their heritage, their reason for being and now find themselves living in complete hopelessness. Imagine being this ten year old and having no family, living in a sweat factory of misery, living each day with a kind of loss, worse than any nightmare we can imagine. You are no longer even hungry. Your senses are shutting down and the feeling of nothing is starving every other possible one.
I realized something awful at that moment, looking at the little child. Does anyone understand that as long as it is doesn’t matter that there are little boys like this in the world, global warming and carbon taxes and Medicare for All, don’t mean a shit?
We are so goddamned self-involved, we want to tackle the science of our future, while we ignore the humanity of the moment. People of all pursuasions get hard ons over things like the Endangered Species Act. Jesus Christ, we are not taking care of our own. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.
I am not one who is optimistic about our ability to get out of our own way. However, i have been looking in the wrong places to corroborate my feelings. As long as this is OK, nothing else matters and that is what hit me.
The fact that there is one little boy like this is wrong. There is simply no justification.
I am not looking to ruin your Thanksgiving or my own. However, I am not sure what to be giving thanks for, when that boy won’t take his eyes off me.
I think we need to reframe the damn conversation. All you smart people seem to be looking for ways to sanctify the science, but we are sacrificing our soul, our humanity. I get a kick out of pretending to be the Buddha and I know he would say as long as there is one boy like this anywhere in the world, our sole priority is to treat him with compassion and never let it happen again. He was pretty smart and he knew it was about the effort as its own reward.
I have been a lucky guy and have so much to be thankful for. I certainly think about the future, not necessarily having a starring role in the time ahead, once my contract expires. I wonder what it will take for us to not be a victim of our own hand. As long as we are not capable of taking care of each other, we can’t possibly take care of the planet and that is what I see in his eyes.