Let's talk war...

Change comes and goes like waves crashing on an oceanfront. When did the tide rise? How did it start? Does it ever finish?

** Disclaimer. I am talking to myself so this is not about you.

• Does anything move in isolation?
• Is helping helping?
• What sets the tone?

— At the gate. #recognize

As if to be told you have no home.

You have no place to go to.

You are stranded.

How messed up is this world in its vastness that an idea such as this could stand? Where illusions drawn out of thin air of borders, identities, and allegiances defile the essence of humanity.

The sad part is that this story repeats and keeps repeating. We never learn. Will we ever? most likely, NO.

For five hours on the plane, I was relieved not to have Internet to see what was happening while simultaneously couldn’t wait to land to check on loved ones. The anxiety and heavy chest wouldn’t leave me.

The burden was painful. You live in it. It doesn’t just come and go. It’s a constant heaviness you can’t displace and while you try to smile at it, the distraction doesn’t last.

I craved to sit so still that I was numb. Even for a second, I didn’t want to think or feel. I simply didn’t want any of it.

— Righteousness. #understand

Yet Righteousness is the most vicious ailment. In rising in defense and protecting we witness the most dreadful offenses.

The world will bury itself in rubble before it can speak the truth of its crimes. The death toll will rise and in it, we will sow the seeds of the future.

Such is the reality of torn-up feelings meddling for a touch of the truth and being denied it. And here on this threshold, the glass breaks. The window shatters. And the song cries “Enough”.

This week I don’t want to be Lebanese. This week I’m tired of books with promised land, heaven & angels, and virgins waiting.

I’m fed up with righteousness and its zealots heroes, martyrs, and defenders. It’s blasphemy I seek because something has to change. This can’t be the way forward.

I’d rather call things as they are not as we aspire them to be. I don’t want us to co-exist I want us to exist. How is that too hard?

We reduced Death to martyrdom, casualties, victims, children, innocent … but death is death. What explains it, doesn’t change it.

And for that scr*w the maps, the religions, and who has the best cuisine… The day we wake up dying from the inside out is not a home for the misguided ideology that goes beyond everything those faiths preach.

— Checks & Balances. #accept

If the measure of success lies in how countries, communities, and religions co-exist we will always lose. Our differentiation is diminished in the lie of existing separately as if it was an option.

Shaking I write these last few words because I dread what my body can’t contain and my mind will never comprehend. Every war whether it was within, in a community, organization, or country starts and ends with the line it tries to draw.

Does it make me feel better saying all of this? Does the chest pain go away? No. But now you know and me talking to me hopefully will get us to recognize one day there is no us.

Until next time,
Carlo