Julio's Musings

I start off this post with a poem by James Patrick Kinney entitled “The Cold Within”

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In dark and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood—
Or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
But the first one held hers back,
For, of the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.

The next one looked cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And could not bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of wealth he had in store,
And keeping all that he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For he saw in his stick of wood
A chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain,
Giving just to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

Their sticks held tight in death’s stilled hands
Was proof enough of sin;
They did not die from cold without—
They died from cold within.

This is my first post of the year. It’s been a while since my last post, though it wasn’t for lack of trying to write. I suppose, once again, I just didn’t really know how to say what I wanted to say. I came across this poem a few weeks back and I completely forgot about it until a couple of days ago. It reminded me of what I had been trying to write.

I tend to be a fairly optimistic person when it comes to people. That’s probably shocking coming from Mr. “I Hate People,” but it’s true. I always think that people are better than what they tend to show. We’re all so very flawed and make many mistakes in life, some of which come from our conscious decisions. We can hurt ourselves and others with our actions many times over. Despite this, I still feel like a lot of people are more than what they show to the outside world. The vast amounts of potential we are born with is always within us waiting to be brought out. But it’s not easy.

I’m not naive enough to think that this is true of everyone, though. Sometimes people are less than what they present to the world. Sometimes people lack substance. Sometimes they aren’t good at all. “Some men just want to watch the world burn,” if you will. We do see evil deeds happen every day. All you need to do is watch the news for a few minutes or read a newspaper briefly. But you can’t always focus on what’s wrong and what’s bad, even if those are the things that are most prevalent in today’s world.

What brought about this whole thought process in my head was actually the holiday season. Oh, wait, I mean Christmas season. Or is it the Hanukkah season? Kwanzaa? Xmas? Santa gift giving season? Oh, whatever. It’s things as simple as that that would cause people to argue. It’s amazing how divided people are these days, though perhaps the truth is that people have always been so divided. Now, however, everyone has a bullhorn (aka twitter, Facebook, social networks in general) to say whatever they want without caring about who they hurt or the consequences that may happen. I realize I’m guilty of doing that, as I’m pretty sure most everyone is. I see people air out their grievances all the time on Facebook. It’s interesting that we do this because almost nobody would actually yell out their passive aggressive thoughts towards others in a store, restaurant, out on the street, etc. or anywhere else there may be tens, hundreds, or thousands of people. And, yet, people do this all the time on Facebook, a place where most have hundreds of “friends” that can see this person scream out their anger of the moment. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about someone commenting on how some jerk was loudly listening to music on the bus or how some maniac driver almost killed you while crossing the street. I’m talking about writing out statuses against our actual friends or family, but keeping them vague enough so that the “friends” don’t know who you’re talking about, but the real friend/family member does. What’s the point? Why do we do these things that cause even more division in a world that has nothing but division?

I’ve always thought of the holidays as a time for everyone to be a little nicer to each other and spread some joy regardless if you have some religious beliefs involved in the season or you just celebrate the more commercial side of the season. It’s a time for family to come together, for friends to remember why they are friends and have some joyous time together, and for strangers to perhaps do a random act of kindness for one another. Did I see these things happen? Yes, I did. But the truth is, I saw so much more anger that people had for each other. Different types of Christians against, not just those who don’t believe in the birth of Christ, but against other Christians as well. Politicians hashing it out because of the upcoming presidential election, causing their supporters to launch attacks against each other and agains the supporters of the current administration. Those that feel corporations are too greedy vs. those that have a great deal of wealth, whether they made that fortune through honest hard work or otherwise. The people vs. the government. Families torn apart by pettiness. Friends lost because they can’t speak to each other honestly. It goes on.

As the poem above suggests, the biggest issue is that we cannot look passed our differences. A lot of Americans hate Muslims, even the ones that have been here all their lives. A lot of Muslims hate Americans as well, to be fair. Democrats and Republicans seemingly hate each other since neither side wants to work together and would rather have the country fall completely apart than come together and compromise and find solutions. The non-religious fear the religious taking away various rights, the religious fear the non-religious are trying to shrink their influence and destroy their beliefs, and the religious fear other religious people are at war with them with their different beliefs. We spend so much time in fear an anger that we forget that we’re all freezing, but we’re too stubborn to do anything that could remotely help the other.

In the words of John Coffey from The Green Mile:”Mostly, I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world everyday. There’s too much of it.” It’s true, there is too much of it. And, yet, I remain optimistic. Why is that? Why do I still have so much hope for a world so broken and quite possibly on its way to self destruction? What’s the point?

I guess it’s just who I am.