by Mark Antony Rossi

Songs claim love can repair the chasm between distant strangers. Churches say our imperfect nature, damaged since creation, is a millstone around the neck of humanity. In politics, they promise you the moon but at the steepest price of the stars. Continued drink drives the demons away allowing space to catch a breath. And how we use that breath makes the difference between recidivism and redemption.

These are but a few of the thoughts running through the fields of a restless mind. Am I making a difference in a polarized planet happy to remain secure in its pampered corner? Am I challenging the convenient narratives that hold back curiosity for the sake of conformity? Am I losing my beloved Republic one precious value at a time?

When I cannot convince my Jewish friend he is consorting with a crowd secretly wishing him harm. When I cannot convince Taiwan without a motivated military its constitution is toilet paper. When I cannot convince fellow veterans the greatest threat to liberty comes from corporate social media. When I am failing to find a fragment of faith in this rotten cavity of vanity. When I confess the night does the night confess me.

The world isn’t brighter because there aren’t enough people willing to help others it’s less brighter because help is carelessly rejected due to pride or prejudice. And that venial rejection turns the once willing into apathetic souls. The heartless cycle continues and the world grows more unstable and less welcoming.

If we are going to wake up tomorrow morning with a renewed commitment that effort must be strong enough to cast aside church, state, art, science, and technology in order to make unencumbered contact with another living human being. To gain Peace we must risk War and to show Love we must bare our souls to the harbingers of Hate.

In our naked essence, the forces of fear hesitate for they cannot rely on masks or music to distract a unified front. A meeting of the minds is the method we need to work out the answers we seek. But the potential for blood and sacrifice hovers over best intentions like a famished vulture unfettered for the kill. The righteous risk rivers of hell by abandoning pompous principles to begin a dialogue with a counterpart equally yoked with pernicious law; yet leading with a heavy heart.

The beginning of solidarity is the ending of distrust by all means necessary. We arrive barefoot and bleeding having walked across glass, rocks, fire, and suicidal doubt to see a fellow traveler willing to make the same voyage. And we start with the truth: the voyage was not made in name of flag or creed or color or culture or nation or uniform or divinity or philosophy or rain or shine. It was made because all those costumes are burying the human spirit. The beginning of solidarity is the ending of categories and the start of human beings having the strength to talk to other human beings.

About the Author:

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