The air trembles as the plane approaches. Several miles off, presumably. The whine of the engines sharpen, and the sounds start to reverberate through the walls. It reaches a fevered pitch, somewhere over my roof. It makes me think of when my father would speak of the Korean war....the sound bombs made while falling, wailing through the air, unspeakably eerie, while men awaited their doom. I keep waiting for the crash, the shockwave to come echoing through the room, the fireball illuminating the darkened horizon outside my bedroom window. It can't possibly be landing, those noises must precipitate some certain doom, too low to the ground, too far to reach the runway.
The shock comes when these things fail to pass. "When?" my mind cries, though I've learned better by now. Pavlov would be laughing merrily at my visceral reactions. So ready to accept the end of the world. Sirens blare down the street. Is this it? Sometimes, a sense of helplessness ensues.
At times I feel that I am helpless to change not only the world, but the inner sanctum of my mind, which still tells me that maybe one day, there WILL be a paradise for all....but not how the mindless propaganda machine has invisioned it. When did the world abandon love, reason, and cooperation? When did it become good to separate, divide, conquer, achieve dominion over, enforce morals on, and generally forcibly mold someone to a minorities collective ideal? Why not seek Utopia?
Religion can not do it. Ethics, unconditional love, true compassion, and empathy can.
What would it take, to shed the scales from our eyes? Why is hate, anger, war, revenge, and sheer malicious brutality ever a force in our world? What makes a person turn to the side of cruelty? Why does one have to destroy another to sustain a comfortable life?
It is remarkable, to me, that most people and religions around the world preach kindness, "family values": Christianity, Islam, Judaism, which all are, in their cores, geared to human survival and community, and yet, when it comes to practicing these ideals with our fellow man, we fail miserably. I simply can not understand why anyone would want to inflict harm on another. It reminds me of the two serpents, each eating the others tail. Is it really an infinite and destructive cycle, or can this "system of things" be changed for the better? I hope, for the sake of all humanity, that the world can some day look at the bigger picture.