Oh, it is a sight to behold. To take a drive out of the city and just walk down a country road, listening to hear each different crunch and crackle. If you ask me, the sun is in a completely different mood in autumn. It’s like the sun is settling down after a long, crazy, but pristine day. The cold, crisp air is like the sighs of the earth, and the world seems to spin just a little slower. I rolled in a leaf pile for the first time in years yesterday. It was placid ecstasy. Everyone should, at least once in his life, watch a Wisconsin sunset in late summer/early fall. God’s voice must sound like a sunset.
It occurs to me that our problem lies not in a deception about foreign affairs or motivations in going to war. No. This evil runs much deeper into the very veins of our nation, into the hearts and heads of every individual. Our problem is, instead, a misconception about the very purpose of a government and its citizens’ expectations. How dare we point our fingers at those to whom we have delegated responsibility? We call them liars and snakes. Callous. Selfish. Dare I suggest that they are our representatives for a reason? This war in which we are engaged, perhaps even ensnared, is not the fault of the officials, but of our very attitudes as the populous. When defending this war, they say that we are defending our own, working to prevent the loss of American lives in the future. This reasoning, however, turns sour in the stomachs of the weeping mothers, the disillusioned soldiers, the individuals sitting at home who must swallow the images of widowed women cradling their maimed children. And yet, We the People, are the true perpetrators of this reality. It is We the People who have fed this beast of a government the very lie it now feeds us. What is the excuse of the officials? The government’s primary role is to protect and defend its citizens. This is the insidious trap that we have laid for ourselves. But we are only looking out for Number One…and that is what we have been doing since the beginning. That is what led so many to hate us from the start. That lie is the seed of our wars, international and internal. This democracy, whether one respects it or not, was built upon the opinions of the people and, while its integrity is considered by many to have been spirited away, if it ever had any, the truth remains that unless We the People fed this lie to our government, it would have no reason to spit it back out at us today. We the People have spawned this selfish vision. We have demanded that our government pour itself out for this vision. We have demanded that our sons and neighbors spill their blood for the protection of our pocketbooks and our comfort. We have created this beast. This beast is our responsibility.
Perhaps our priorities are in need of reevaluation, and I mean on more than a federal or political level. I mean our very reasons for getting out of bed in the morning, for how else can we cut to the heart of a problem that has sprung from the heart of the people? Perhaps it is time we relinquish the drive to look out for Number One and stop numbering people altogether. Since the goal of a government will ultimately mirror the goal of its people, perhaps it is time we humble ourselves and stop trying to shove off the blame. Perhaps it is time for a revolution of motivation. What would happen if I could not only abandon the drive to protect Number One, but abandon the drive to identify myself as Number One altogether? What if our founding fathers were just as imperfect as we are? What would happen if we could rewrite the battle cry of our nation? Change its very heart and let a new idea flow through our veins? Perhaps it is idealistic, but it is our only hope, therefore we must either accept the depravity of today, or take a step away from ourselves to defend our thin hopes for tomorrow. Maybe then we would find ourselves the soldiers of a war worth fighting. Maybe we would become a nation of the people, by the people, for the world.
My throat is scratchy and my head feels hot. Its 12:53 a.m. and I just got home and everyone is asleep, it feels like, in the whole world. I’m so tired and my head is throbbing but I don’t want to move toward going to bed.
I wish someone would make me a hot bath and speak pleasantly with me while I sit there, and I will breathe in the hot steam and feel like the air is hugging me, soothingly brush my hair and braid it for me and then straighten my bed for me so that all of the blankets’ corners line up with the bed and speak gently while they tuck me in, puff up my pillow a little bit, pull the covers up snug and tight, sit carefully on the side of my bed, ask me if there is anything else that would make me feel better, take my temperature, give me a cold rag for my throbbing forehead, tell me to get plenty of rest and they will check up on me in the morning, and that if there’s anything I need, they’re just one door away, and then sing me a hypnotic lullaby as they stroke my hair until I’ve almost fallen asleep, then quietly tip-toe out of my room and flick off the last of the lights, except for the warm glow peeping into my room through the slit under my door, reminding me that they are out there, only one door away, keeping the night beautiful for me and only me.
But tonight I will scrape up some random assortment of pajamas, shove the day’s junk off my sloppy bed, pull half of the covers back on from where they fell off last night and leave the heavy ones wherever they have fallen, read by the light of the cold street lamp through my window, and stare at my blinking stereo light until I clod off to sleep alone. Then I will wake up and everyone will still be asleep. I will eat half a bowl of cold cereal because half way through I will lose motivation, and then rub life back into myself so I can to go school and fall back into rhythm.
Have you ever had a day like that?
