It’s been done before, this tension; it’s nothing new. It echoes from the 20th century a reverberation of continual strike. We listen but fail to comment. Or we do but not directly, for that requires too much of our sanity, and that is required to hold our centre. Or we do but not adequately, for all the words have already been said by many generations before and to find others would be futile. We ourselves echo and we do so without cognition.
There was a promise long ago, and even not too long ago, that the world, wherever it was headed, would not resemble the same as it has. That isn’t to say there were particular promises of equality or equity or the meeting of basic needs, but there was one that assured the masses that it would not ever return. And there was an agreement, in silent prayer or outspoken protest, that we would uphold that.
But in the today, and I mean the immediate now, we still seem not to acknowledge the past and see ourselves. We believe, perhaps because to admit this would be to tangibly kill the promise, that we are still on the trajectory (although, the trajectory continues backward). Some of us, of course, recognize this, and we are proud and holier-than-thou to proclaim this, but we are at this moment, this immediate moment, a minority.
We then, too, proudly alienate one another. It is much healthier for the individual to not be faced with confrontation and discomfort. Cut them out, we whisper to ourselves and each other, focus on yourself. We sedate the palpable irritation of the “other.”
And it is true, to mingle with the other may be to sacrifice where we should be heading. And this is not desirable to the destination and cannot be sacrificed. But which way we go is dependent on one another. And, to day, in this immediate moment, there are many who believe that the 20th century still remains only a memory. To move anywhere it is imperative that we do not leave behind our neighbour, especially the increasingly ubiquitous unrecognizable neighbour.
It is difficult to do this; indeed, it is increasingly difficult to care. It is easy to decide against it and remove ourselves entirely from pressures of the tomorrow. There are days when the tension is loud and it is much too tiring to plug oneself into the news network of umpteen different programs and websites: the CBC, CNN, BBC, CTV, FOX. Three-letter openers to the unknown. They tell us what once was familiar to world-history encyclopedias is now familiar to the internet. They also tell us news: new news. Scientific data news, or technological news.
We are heading, still however similarly, into an unidentifiable future which intersects with more than several other battles. And with one another, especially one another, we must ask ourselves and each other: when we are moving concurrently backward and forth, where are we heading?
Lydia Zuleta Johnson, student editor
lydia@nexusnewspaper.com