virus
My Dear fellow human Sojourners,For the past nearly two years we have been living in fear, fleeing madly from a phantom virus that has stolen our humanity and divided us as never before. Without direct and free human contact can we ever heal the differences between us? Our electronic devices, virtual worlds and social media only serve to separate us more than ever. Must we live in our little, self-imposed isolated worlds where the healthy are scorned and to be human thought of as a disease? Why have we allowed this to happen?I miss those warm summer evenings where we used to gather on each other’s porches, on our rooftops, front steps, in the village square or down by the corner market laughing, crying and reminiscing about life and its many joys, difficulties and absurdities. I miss your embrace. When I go to the market now and I see so many wearing those hideous face coverings of obedience I do not know whether to laugh or cry. Mostly I cry. I do not like to see you humiliated and deprived of precious oxygen. Your right to breathe freely is an inalienable human right and anything less is insensitive and cruel.I miss the expressive creases around your mouth and your radiant smile when we greet each other. I miss your welcome voice with which you express the happenings in your life and the promptings of your heart and soul accented by a good joke once in a while. A person’s eyes may be the windows to the soul but the mouth and lower part of the face are the means of intelligent verbal expression and I miss hearing your firm clear resonant voice as we share our lives in all their hues and colors. The victories, the defeats, the joys and the sorrows for in so doing we lift each other up with love and compassion. This is what being human is all about, otherwise we are just sacks of flesh and bone, castaways in a cold and heartless universe that doesn’t care about our fondest dreams.Living in six foot bubbles of muffled madness has really diminished the experience of being alive. Direct human contact is essential to our well being and the felicity of living in community with one another. This contact is the foundation of our very humanity. I know that we sometimes strongly disagree over many things but the one thing we cannot disagree about is that we are all of one race. That we are created equal is self-evident for we all must walk this mortal green mile together. We live each day with this seeming frailty troubling our hearts. We need each other and we can help each other transcend our fears and human limitations. For it is our shared mortal nature, more than anything, that should bind our hearts together touched by the power of love immortal. For we are the living nexus where ‘eternity is in love with the productions of time.’We are human beings proud and true. Many of us have been sold on the notion that we are born racists bearing the sins of our forefathers, the myth of which is now being used to shame us and cancel our right to free speech, free assembly and the right to gather and petition the government. Don’t believe it. Such a belief is self-defeating, putting a serious damper on the project of true citizenship. We must not surrender our basic freedoms in order to ameliorate the flash mobs of ignorance that are attempting to ruin our country. Do you really want to begin each day of the rest of your lives thinking that you are guilty, sinful creatures? Would you not rather wake up each day invigorated believing that you are a member of a race of rising angels who can transcend the bloody pages of history and achieve the truly great destiny that we have been created for? What is that destiny you may ask? My fellow human sojourners it is up to us. We can create our own greater destiny riding the wings of our creativity and imagination to higher realms of being. This is the beauty and grace of being human. We can truly be the masters of our own destiny.Have you not noticed that most human suffering is unnecessary? We may not be able to avoid the terrifying acts of nature and the pain and suffering of having a mortal body. Does not the lovely rose bloom for a season above her thorns? Can we not tame the impulse to fight and kill each other? Are we mere shoebills meant to instinctively attack our siblings? Must we pollute the environment and befoul our own nest? Do we not create much of our own misery?The great Persian Poet, Omar Khayyam, wrote ‘I myself am heaven and hell.’ Yes, that is right, my brothers and sisters, we create heaven or hell here on Earth. It is up to us. If we use our ability to think freely, creatively coupled with the gift of human imagination we can create a better world. Not a transhuman dystopia that threatens to enshrine a pound of our humanity in silicon chips. We can achieve a destiny greater than anything we ever dreamed possible. For we need not be limited by the dreams we have already fulfilled. As George Bernard Shaw once said “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not.” Let’s leave the nightmare of history behind and dream together of a better world. Why not?
“Now, I understand what you tried to say to meAnd how you suffered for your sanityAnd how you tried to set them freeThey would not listen, they did not know howPerhaps they’ll listen now.”Don Mclean, Vincent
Affectionately yours,
Dave Evans