K. Banks

I’m not a spiritual leader. Not an intellect. Not a public speaker, or a self-help guru. I’m just a human among other humans, and from this position there is so much wrong happening here.

It’s a sad day for the human race when we complain about everything around us and do nothing to change it; when we pay a fortune to attend higher learning, yet walk away knowing nothing of our own thinking; when we go to churches, temples, mosques and whatever other sanctuary to learn about love, only to leave practicing hate and judgment.

It’s a sad day when we have the technological advancement of geniuses, literally at our fingertips, but we use it to take selfies, or gossip, or play video games for millions of followers.

It’s a very sad day when a person lives an entire life working herself to the bone, but has nothing to show for it because even a decent wage just doesn’t pay the bills anymore, and Medicare isn’t what was promised, and neither is Social Security.  But yet, a 34 year old, able-bodied man, with no children to support lives comfortably on SSI with his state-funded cell phone, eating at McDonald’s because they accept EBTs., all the while complaining that the government didn’t send his free money on-time.

But hey, it’s nobody’s fault. We aren’t responsible. We didn’t create this. Right? What can we do about:

the poisons being pumped into our air?

Or the drills pummeling our earth?

Or the newer and more destructive bombs that are being made and tested?

Or the genes that are being manipulated?

Or the physicians who are telling us to take more and more drugs,

Or the number of overdoses and addictions that plague our family members and friends?

Or the food that is being “modified”?

Or the news stations that are more concerned with ratings than news,

Or the endless war we are endlessly engaged in, against faceless enemies?

And this is not even a scoop out of the barrel of shit that is wrong in this world. In fact, this is only a smidgen of the stuff happening in America, let alone the other developed countries of the world, and we won’t even speak of the atrocities that happen in the undeveloped ones…

But we aren’t responsible! We can’t change it!

Well, fret not, my fellow humans, because another election is coming, and with it, another politician with a lovely slogan that’s gonna make it all better. Or maybe another political party; or hey, maybe a business man will fix it, or maybe another bill, or maybe throw out all the old bills…or maybe a woman.

But when that doesn’t fix it, what do we do?

We complain and continue on just as we have–powerless, lambs to the slaughter, marching towards death, day after day, selfie after selfie, meme after meme, making light of the ridiculousness. Another kid on Ritalin, another teen with depression, another school shooting, another acronym for an equality that shouldn’t even be questioned.

When does it stop? When do we stop hating each other, hating ourselves, long enough to come together for real change, real progress, global unity?

What would that even look like?

I’m just as guilty… I’ve done horrible things in my life, seen horrible things. But I turned my life around. And everyday I have worked to be a better person, some days are better than others, but I think the most horrible thing I do now is sit idly by and say nothing, when everything inside of me is screaming for people to WAKE UP! Stop the madness!

Our lives have been hijacked by complacency, by domestication and civility. Comfort has made us weak and bored; we are dis-eased, and so we spread it onto everyone else, a virus of boredom, distraction, and ugliness. Progress should have given us more time, more compassion–the ability to accomplish more in every arena.

But alas, everything is a paradox. And the paradox here, is, the more we have, the more we have nothing to do. And so we look for things to do, we fixate, we find fault, and we fight, because it is our nature to survive a threat. Problem is, there is no threat, so we make them up. We tell ourselves stories of threats, create an us v. them scenario in our minds. We say because this person is different I have to hate them, hurt them, shun them, whatever. We don’t even bother to educate ourselves about them or their differences.

And it doesn’t stop there, every mainstream media outlet in the US does the same. It feeds us all the lies we want to hear and we get high off the hate and carnage.

We have been born, fed, and grown on the belief that we deserve something. But the truth is, we deserve only what we put into this life. There isn’t a pill, there isn’t law, there isn’t a status that’s gonna fix it, because the thing that’s “wrong” is in all of us–it is us.

We are what’s wrong.

And it’s time to change that…