Share
By Nejoud Al-Yagout
We live in a world where war coverage is live, social media keyboard warriors are loud and fierce, and racism and “anti-thisism” and “anti-thatism” ring loudly in our ears. Every day, we are bombarded with negativity and violence and horrific images of war and racial slurs and vandalism. Every day, we hear about children being displaced and sold into slavery, women being raped and subjugated, and refugees fleeing their homes only to be treated as inferior citizens by those who reluctantly open their borders to them or deny them entry.
The world has been poignantly divided into perpetrators and victims, enemies and allies, black and white, men and women, nationals and refugees/stateless/foreigners, politicians and citizens, and rich and poor. Never has the divide been so obvious thanks to social media and viral videos. Everywhere we turn, people take sides, point fingers, condemn the other, forgetting that we created the mess we see projected before our eyes. We shudder when one of our own is killed but rejoice when the so-called enemy is slaughtered. The world is in shambles and our way to respond is to further fuel the fires of war by discriminating against anyone who does not share our views or religion or nationality.
Oceans and forests and rivers welcome us all. The sun shines on us all. The sky is available to all. And yet, we refuse to live in harmony, even with all the examples nature sets for us. We choose chaos and borders and deportation and enmity and divisiveness. The very few peace activists on our planet receive death threats for daring to unite humanity. Those who choose nonviolence are considered weak and submissive. Those who root for all of humanity are verbally and physically abused and shunned and considered traitors. Those who want to unite the world are ostracized, mocked and referred to as idealists who have no grip on reality.
But we cannot afford to be afraid of what others think. Oneness is worth it. Oneness is the only solution to all our woes. Oneness can save humanity, no matter how deeply conditioned we are to believe otherwise. We are here to face the darkness within ourselves, transcend it, and then shine our light on one another. We are here to remind each other that nationality, borders, gender disparity, abuse and racism are manmade constructs that are destroying any chance for peace we have on this planet. Our political ambitions and nationalism are responsible for the massacre, genocide and displacement of our fellow brothers and sisters. The politicians we condemn are projections of our collective madness.
The problem is within each of us, individually and collectively, and not what we see paraded on our screens. The conflict is in our egos, in the way we each move in the world, in the way we choose to hate the “other”. The struggle we see among people is the struggle we each face, when we dare to look at the war within us every day, deep within our psyches. The struggle is primordial: Humans refer to it as the battle between good and evil, the battle between darkness and light.
We cannot claim to be innocent or on the side of good when we revel at the sight of a fellow human being in suffering or cheer when politicians threaten to get rid of expatriates or those who are not like us. How many of us would give water to an enemy stranded in the desert? How many of us would extend words of love rather than insults to those who do not share our beliefs? How many of us would choose peace over war? How many of us dream of a world in which people of all races, beliefs, nationalities are united in peace and love?
Only when we surrender our egos, only when we see that every single human being has a right to security, will we see the futility of war, occupation, genocide, apartheid, colonization and resistance. When we live in sync with nature, when “isms” dissolve, when we prize oneness over expansionism, we can finally inhabit a world that is safe for our children.
Until then, we can continue to subdue one another and fan the flames of racism by taking sides and engaging in whataboutism. We can continue to judge and intimidate the enemy, and galvanize others to destroy the enemy, putting in danger our own communities and even humanity in the process, or we can come to the realization that the enemy, the true enemy, is closer than we think. As is peace: Individual and collective peace. Oh!
