It’s been difficult to write, more difficult than usual.
The news has been especially disturbing as of late, and I can still recall the days when I’d criticize mom for paying attention to the news on television, back when we still had a television in our living room. Years later, I find myself clenched to my seat, unable to look away; scared, angered, and disheveled by the scene on the screen of my laptop all at once.
To make matters more difficult, I don’t know what else I can really say to anyone else at this point. For a long time, my writing’s operated on the premise that I could appeal to reason within others the way others have appealed to the reason within me, but at this point, I’m not so sure anymore.
At this point, I don’t know who’s listening, or if anyone is listening at all. At the very least, I tell myself, the writing will go on some kind of record, for whatever that might count, except that there are so many records, so many of which are just obsolete, all just describing a moment of helplessness before the act of a great crime or tragedy against humanity, but they never actually contesting it or fighting back, just merely recounting.
The idea, then, that I can at least write to educate others about injustice in hopes of raising a general awareness to prevent more crimes against humanity offers little respite from the great sense of disappointment that my efforts at this have produced so far. Toni Morrison once said “the purpose of freedom is to free someone else,” but what’s the point of freeing one person’s mind if three times as many will still remain enchained at the end of the day?
Continue reading “Reeling from Our News Cycle”