A lot has altered since January 1st, with so much trauma ongoing in the wider world. I am told that it is important to balance bad news with personal achievement to be able to function correctly, that social media often inflates terror and loss to unacceptable levels. I don’t think people know enough right now about what is happening around them. Most don’t care and aren’t listening. Huge numbers of people never take these issues seriously until it is too late.
Many, I am beginning to realise, don’t change even then. They never grow at all.
Evolution has been contentious since Charles Darwin suggested it as a concept. It’s no surprise when many have been taught since they were kids that the first woman was created from the rib of the first man. It’s why anyone who starts messing around with definitions of sexuality will alway encounter a measure of resistance in certain sectors of society. It challenges their status quo.
We all rationalise in different ways. My go-to example is historical: a previous monarch of this country created his own church in order to marry who he wanted without consequence and to appropriate a vast amount of wealth he felt was his by divine right. He used his power in the most grotesque manner possible. The higher people sit on the hierarchal ladder, the more dangerous that selfishness becomes. We also deal with inadequacies in different ways.
There are those who learn and those who are happy not doing so. In fact, their life does not need any new input or ideas, or else their idea of what is an acceptable reality might be damaged forever. That’s what we’re seeing right now playing out in real time. It’s translating into spats in social media, as people’s petty entitlements are called out with increasing frequency.
It is why, more than at any point before, we must be vocal in our resistance to other people’s passive aggressive behaviour. It is why being an ally to those who are being targeted for abuse or persecution is vital. It is incredibly tiring too, and often massively upsetting, but without that constant vigilance things will just stay the way they are because nobody else really gives a fuck.
That is the greatest injustice of all.
Poetry has made me a better human being: it allows me to communicate more effectively. It demands I can stand up and perform my thoughts and observations to an audience. Mostly, it makes me accountable to myself. I am grateful for every opportunity to perform as a result because it gives ideas confidence and my own shortcomings an opportunity to be improved.
After 100 days of writing these posts, I am reminded of how much there is still to learn about myself, and that I must never stop improving what has been begun.
Good one.x