HiLo Review #014 — A Reflection on a Utopia Not Yet Reached.
Seeing things with your eyes wide open is tough. Feeling everything no matter how hard you try to balm is exhausting. Bearing witness, in great detail, to the constant failings of humanity is harrowing.
Things are changing faster than I can note. Ten years ago, the pain and anger would have moved me to get active. Rather than die, I’d alchemize dark energy into purposeful service.
Today, I find myself still. Sorting, recalculating, recalibrating Moving slow So slow So slow, one could perceive immobility. With my empathy and rage fully intact, I point my bow upward, a clear shot to the target I’m unsure the tool to arm it with. I have a deep need to be exacting when I strike.
I got two spankings in my entire life:
The first was when my mom discovered I was lying. I would make up things my brother did to me. Low-stakes kid shit like “he hit me” or “he pushed me”.
The second? I called a kid “four eyes.” Very lame, low-brow bullying. The irony? My mom worked in the business of selling glasses, and everyone in my family (except me) wore them.
In retrospect, maybe I was just hating from outside the club.
From those two experiences, I gleaned two important lessons - don’t lie and don’t be an asshole. Two things I try to live by.
Each generation lives the same story. A birth. Then, a hope for a beautiful life. You grow up. You make loved ones. You dream of replicating, or maybe rewriting, a version of the family you came from. You dream of laughter. Smiles. Joy. You're grateful to have food on the table. Grateful for work. Then, you get older. You look to your left, someone has a little more. Why is that? You start to think. Reflect. You wonder if everything you dreamed of as a child is actually coming to life. And then, suddenly, you’re staring into the eyes of the world, theirs and yours. You see lack. It's not enough. You search for something to blame. Governments. Systems. These abstract spaces, though run by people, feel inanimate. When things break at the top, you feel it most in the middle and at the bottom. And while you're living your small, micro life, somewhere else, larger deals are being made. Which country gets to thrive? Which country must suffer? Who’s giving the goods, and who’s holding out their hand? In our tiny world, there are victories. Upsets. Yearning. In the massive one, they are shifting puzzle pieces, Big hands deciding who lives and who dies. And no one gets to choose the soil on which they’re born.
There is a belief that we are all one collective consciousness — and, in some theologies, one collective spiritual body. So when some are orchestrating genocides and calling it protection, it’s like an oozing, infected sore on our collective inner thigh. You can cover it with jeans, then with gauze, and pretend it’s healing.
But it’s still there.
And if we don’t take care, it spreads.
And so what if it does? Is it only bad because one day "it could happen to you"? Or is it bad because no one deserves to live under such horrifying conditions?
I argue the latter.
And I implore us all to consider the latter.
What does it say about us if our empathy emerges only when we center ourselves, on our “what if” pain or our traumatic “remember whens”?
On the road to utopia, we must begin to see each other as one — to truly feel that when someone miles away is hurting, you are too.
My utopia is a high-quality life where everyone wins.
A good place to lay your head Good nourishment. Good love. Friends and lovers holding your heart with care And you, holding theirs just as carefully To honor and be curious about differences, rather than seeking to eliminate them. An acknowledgement of generational pain Through reparation and accountability The death of ego. The re-birth of humility. I want a world so tender that hate feels obtuse.