It's been a while since I've written, and you get a gift of rambling thought.
I've been back in my home town of Boston for about half a year. It's been amazingly strange since I've come back. Shucked are the ways I use to do some things, but you inevitable sink back into other habits. Some good, some bad.
So, what has taken me so long to actually post anything? Part of it was that I found myself "busy." At least, busy enough to not finish a new post. Why now? I'm not entirely sure.
I think I've found new motivation behind writing. I've done a lot of thinking that I wasn't able to do since the ongoing turbulence that started when I decided to travel. What is definitely known, is what prevented me from writing.
On more than one occasion, I started to write about the next place I had traveled to, Israel. For many reasons I couldn't find a way to summarize my thoughts. I was conflicted by a lot of things I saw and experienced. Certainly more so since conflict broke out mere weeks after returning. Culturally driven violence that just escalated. In an awful way. What made it even harder to write was how much of it refracted and reflected the same issues we see here, in the States. Only more extreme.
Don't get me wrong. It's one of the most beautiful places I've been to. But the seething undercurrent of anxiety, and seeing militarized teenagers is sad. It got to me.
You see so many groups of people - loosely defined by culture - happy to value their lives over someone else's. There are misconceptions, prejudice, ambivalence, complacency, and, of all things, a sense of justification. Yes, bad people have done bad things on both sides of any conflict, really. Vengeance and violence are fairly natural reactions for losing something you hold dear, be it a possession, an ideal, or just innocence, but the retaliatory, angered escalation is what is saddening.
What's worse is you apply it to any of the headlines in the news lately. It's not a matter of country or religion. It's human nature, and it's amplified when the worst of our fears control our actions.
I stepped away to think very existentially for a period of time. Whats the point of being here? Why does any of it matter? The only conclusion I came to was there is as much a point in doing something, as there is in doing nothing. Does my output as a human being actually lead to anything greater? Ever? Not really, and certainly less so if you put your faith solely in science.
But...
My actions, my behaviors can do so much to escalate that of another. You - all of you - are in some part aiding astronauts be astronauts, and politicians be politicians, and religious leaders be religious leaders, and mothers be mothers. You are measured against nothing, unless you are measured by the people around you. For that, your life is the sum of your actions and their impact on that around you. If the sum of your output falls on the side of making someones life worse, well then, you're doing it wrong. Intentionally or unintentionally, you have added nothing to your legacy. You left what little of there is worse than it was before you were here.
So, to all of those willing to go to war on behalf of some ideal, and willing to leave a path of destroyed, marginalized, or disenfranchised in your wake, then you have managed to be as bad as the thing you have gone to war with.
To those that have lived to elevate those around you, you have made this world great, and worth pushing to make better.
