Where Is The Love?

BY: AMIR HARDY

I'm not sure about everyone else, but I am tired of hearing about teenagers taking their own lives to escape the harassment they experience for simply being themselves. I can't read another story about people killing one another over petty squabbles that could be solved with words. I still can't get over the fact that I've witnessed a war in my lifetime. When will the madness end?

 People believe the world will end in 2012--but I feel the world's demise has already begun. Once we eliminate all of the hatred and inhumanity that surrounds our lives, maybe we would all see that.

The problem is not racism, homophobia, poverty, religion or the other labels for society's troubles; it is the fact that we have abandoned the human gift of love and fail to share that with one another. We have adapted so well to being split and divided, that we can't even recognize the damage it has and continues to cause. Someone always has to be superior while the other kisses their feet. If we experience difference, we shun it because we embrace it. We rather degrade someone before empowering them. Peace has become an unrealistic ideal because we have settled deep in our hateful ways and fail to realize how easy it is to attain it. Condemnation, discrimination and hatred requires effort that ultimately detach us further from respect and love, despite the fact that they are simple human expressions.

When any significant societal problem and issue is analyzed, it all comes down to a lack of brotherhood and sisterhood that we need in our lives. The day that we quit focusing on ourselves as individuals and shift to collectivist mindset, the major problems that we encounter in life will vanish. We can solve any problem if we are solving them together. Separation and inequality would be extinguished and we could be rescued from having to read depressing headlines every time we pick up a newspaper. Sure, the world would not necessarily be a perfect place, but it would be a world defined by true humanity and peace. 

With all that said, I am not a delusional dreamer who hopes for a world of cotton candy skies and pretty unicorns. Rather, I have faith in what the human species can be.  And it's more than what we demonstrate in our everyday lives.  Let peace be a goal and not a fantasy.