I don’t belong in a world where money is more important than happiness; where success is measured in things, not experiences; where being a person full of life and love could be considered a failure.
I don’t feel safe in a world of judgmental humans, always focused on someone’s skin, clothes and social background. I don’t understand the world where a smile is not the main currency and every person is somehow in competition with everyone else, regardless of the infinite abundance we are fortunate to be surrounded with; regardless of everything we can accomplish together.
I can’t belong to the world where people still think taking selfies while eating a lobster or a giant piece of steak covered in gold is something to brag about. I feel like disappearing within myself when a seemingly reasonable person claims they just “love meat” too much to consider anything else. What is it that they love? Dead tissue with some texture and spices on it? Is that really something we can’t live without? Holding on to few flavours we “can’t live without” we rob ourselves of the opportunity to taste a million better ones, in every possible way. I can’t understand the selfishness, but even more, I just don’t understand the minds behind that. Why identify with something that’s just a habit, especially when it’s bad, for you, for other sentient beings, and for the planet? Why make it a part of who we think we are?
I can’t feel like I’m a part of the world where someone can proudly claim they are animal lovers, but they eat them and wear their skins every single day; where a sensitive child is being ridiculed because they close their eyes at the butcher’s window or the meat section in a supermarket – a world where you can eat flesh and cheap fast food daily, and no one says a thing, but if you decide to become plant-based, everyone is suddenly worried about your health and have an opinion on your food choices?
Is any change really so difficult that you’d rather rationalize torture and killing of hundreds of BILLIONS of animals every year; even attack those that bring out this fact to you, rather than just accepting that things have gone too far and we need to at least take a step back before it’s too late.
You say it’s tradition, that your parents have done it. Well, ok – live like your parents then. Walk as much as they did, work physically ad much as they did, use as much plastic as they did, eat as much meat as they did – and the planet will be grateful for it. But you can’t, can you?
I feel like an alien here, torn between the future we’re destroying and the past we are running away from. We can know everything about everything, we have the access to the knowledge, but we still allow our habits and comfort-centred minds to selectively filter what truths we are exposed to, and ignore everything else that doesn’t suit us. The world is on fire and we are heavily focused on the next model of our favourite sneakers and the next best phone to buy.
I don’t belong among people that still choose comfort over truth.
Is your love for Nutella and few cosmetic products really worth pushing orangutans into extinction? Do you really love cow-flesh that much that it justifies destroying the Amazon rainforest? Is it really so difficult to let go of your attachments to the comfort of single-use plastics, before our Ocean turns into a plastic graveyard? Do you really need so much stuff in your life, in your wardrobes, in your houses? Is it really impossible to live with just a little bit less, so that others can have just a fraction of what you had all your life and always took it for granted?
How did we turn into this? When did we start seeing Earth and all its wonders as nothing more than resources for our neverending greed? How much until enough? How much more do we need? We were given a Garden that provided us with everything we ever needed, and yet we keep digging for something else. For what?
So, I observe but I don’t belong. I can’t understand our obsession with creating problems and then wasting billions on a hundred different fixes on how to live with those problems easier. For every issue we create a pill, a drink, an instant fix, so we never have to deal with the cause of the problem at all. We remove the symptoms and think it’s the same as solving the cause of the symptoms. How does that make sense? How did we allow this to become our reasoning?
I observe and I don’t belong. It is my problem, I understand that. I don’t feel at home in the world we created. I don’t think it’s possible to feel at home when the foundations of that home are collapsing under their own weight. Sometimes I feel alone, observing. Sometimes other warm souls surprise, or people that shed the past and step up. Is there an army out there, a silent army that is waking up, ready to undo the mistakes we’ve all contributed to? Because that’s the world I could belong to. That’s the future I could commit to. That’s a home I would happily help build.
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p.s. Cover photo created with photos by Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash and by Alex Wolfe on Unsplash
Tamara??
at 3:57 pm
“Because that’s the world I could belong to. That’s the future I could commit to. That’s a home I would happily help build.” Too <3