A Rant of Good and Bad and Society
They say I’m wrong, that I’m not good. Do they even know what good is? Do they see the shades of gray everywhere they look? Do they see the gray or is it all black and white to them?
I can see the good in other people some of the time, but then a curtain falls and it’s gone. The good is gone. The lantern goes out and there’s no sun rising in the east. I might be imagining it. I might be seeing something that doesn’t exist. Do good deeds have meaning? Are they a cry for attention? Is that why I try to help other people? Not because it feels good for me, but because it will earn me some recognition from someone? Maybe I am wrong, not good, not anything… Maybe I’m nothing, just like they say. I can’t be nothing though… I can’t be nothing because I am here. I am here, aren’t I? I’m real, right? I’m not a doll. I breathe, I feel, I know. But breathing doesn’t mean that I’m not nothing, it might mean I just exist. Existing doesn’t mean I am real. It doesn’t mean I am here.
And are these feelings even real? Is there truth to these emotions? Do hate and fear exist? Is there love? Is there a valid and evident difference between people? Why is one person wrong and one right? Wrong. Right. What makes them what they are? Who’s to say what’s what? Just because some people think it doesn’t mean it’s true.
It’s like words. Who’s to say that a fork is a fork? It’s the common word for that thing but if enough people changed and wanted to call that fork a mita, then the new word for a fork would be mita! And over time people would change and accept the word difference. Change is different and people fear it. Once something is changed people accept it more and more over time.
Take racial segregation for example. People were hateful, angry, and whites dominated society. It was a way of life, no matter how unfair everything was for the minorities. It was accepted. It was encouraged. And now it’s frowned upon, but people still are racist. You can hear it on the streets, in the schools, even at work in some cases—‘nigger’, they say, or ‘chink’—so offensive and downright cruel but do people see that? Do they see the hurt and the pain? Or is life a blur of greed with the goal of elevation? Looking down at all others that aren’t worthy is difficult for me to understand. Does that make me a bad person? Is my difference negative?
With cruel words and nasty attitudes people bring down others. Insulting someone, or something they care about, hurts. They say, ‘You don’t mean anything’. They say, ‘Your words don’t matter; you are nothing’. It’s difficult. It’s painful. Girls are called ‘sluts’, ‘whores’, ‘bitches’, and it can lead to depression. Does that even register to some people? That their—your—actions can lead to the death of someone. Do you care? Does it matter to you? Or is it just an eternal cycle of self-improvement and nothing matters less than someone you’re stepping on to get to where you want to be?
And even before that. Before work, before college, as teenagers and younger, have you considered what the lesser than average person goes through? Breaking, drowning, crashing against the rocks and losing breath and sight, everything is dark. Do you know how that feels? What it means to suffocate? To struggle upward as you try to escape from the delicately threaded cocoon that burns your hands as you push it aside? Does the blood gathering on the arms of that child—for she is a child, a broken child, with no innocence left—register in your head? When she tightens the knot and jumps off the chair will you mourn? Does the boy three lockers over from yours catch your attention? With his skipping class, drinking, smoking… Can you understand that he’s looking for an escape? When he over doses at eighteen will you have even known his name after six years together as classmates?
