“We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world—the company of those who have known suffering.” ~ Helen Keller

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As the news of yet more war, more fighting, more pain, more devastation, and more loss fills our television screens and takes over social media, we average people in our day-to-day lives collectively grieve.

We grieve for a world forever changed by these nonsensical decisions to harm others. We grieve for a world that seems to have lost its way. We grieve for the deaths. The injured. The unnecessary destruction that history has shown, time and time again, does nothing but cause more pain. More heartache. More anger. More hatred. And more loss and grief. Nobody ever wins.

It’s unfathomable that we don’t seem to have learnt one thing from history. That we repeat the same mistakes. The same stupidity. The same ignorance. For what? Ego? Control? Power? Greed?

As I sit in my home on the other side of the world, I can in some ways detach myself and move about life with some sort of normality. But I am aware the hatred is everywhere. It’s in every corner. It is inescapable. It’s between countries. It’s about religion. It’s about race. About gender. Sexual orientation. It’s about others’ choices, even though another’s choices are unlikely to even affect you.

It’s about generational differences. It’s the bullying because the bully is so insecure they need to feel better about themselves. It’s the divide between rich and poor. The abled and disabled. The young and old. It’s about judgement and the ignorance of us as humans, when we close our minds and think our beliefs, our choices, and the way we live is the only way. It’s the projection of our own insecurities onto us. It’s about women and this incessant desire to slowly strip away our rights and autonomy. It’s about men and this toxic idea that they should be stoic and bury their emotions, until they one day explode. It’s about those men who see women as an object to conquer. It’s a f*cking mess.

COVID-19 shook the world to its core in 2020, and I believe there were a whole heap of lessons we humans were supposed to learn. We were meant to clearly see our way of living and focus on material items and work was doing us harm. We were shown that when the world is forced to stop for a little while, everything gets better. Our environment began to improve. Our waterways were clearer. Our skies void of pollution. And even though many struggled with more solitude and maybe a quieter life, it allowed many of us to reflect. Many of us went within ourselves and started listening to our own voice rather than all the external chatter. We should have taken stock and acknowledged that we humans are the issue and used that knowledge to do better and be better.

But instead, we as a collective learnt nothing. Whilst many individuals began a journey of healing, growth, and change, as a whole, we have returned to the same behaviours. The same beliefs, filled with anger, judgement, and ego. The same toxicity. The same greed. We sit here and watch the world implode because we humans cannot collectively regulate our emotions. We cannot accept our own faults. Our own failings. It’s always someone else’s fault. We cannot see that perhaps someone else’s perspective is healthier. That someone else may have a better idea. A better solution. More insight. We cannot understand that it’s okay to be different and that nobody is better than another. That every human has the right to the same things, regardless of who we are. We have this pervasive need for control, when the only thing we should be controlling is our own lives.

In all the wars, all the carnage, all the f*ckery inflicted because of our blinding need for control and our desperate need to placate and boost our egos, we have not learnt a damn thing.

So we sit and watch the unnecessary pain and loss being inflicted around the world, with a heavy heart. Those making these horrific decisions to cause harm are only concerned about winning. About controlling the outcome. About the need for their ego to be boosted. We can walk out into the street and see all the beauty in the differences of each of us, yet some spew hatred from their hearts for those differences. We are doing something fundamentally wrong. We are raising our kids wrong if we are creating more hatred. And we are lacking any semblance of emotional maturity or intelligence if we have no insight into our own behaviours.

We are the most destructive creatures on this planet.

I grieve the loss of innocent lives. I grieve a world where people cannot put another before themselves or their ego. I grieve the greed that is destroying so many people. I grieve for any human that is so full of hatred, they think life is worthless. I grieve for all those who are marginalised and even scorned for being born the way they are. I grieve for women who are continually seen as unequal and have to tolerate others making decisions about their bodies. I grieve for men who have been taught they are more important than women because they will never know true happiness. I grieve for those who falsely believe they need to bury their emotions, as they will never know what it’s like to be their true self. I grieve for the innocent children growing up in a world that cannot see its way out of the hatred.

We are a divided world and a divided people and I grieve for that division. So much brokenness, that could be fixed if we humans valued others and ourselves. If we were more focused on our own faults than on those of others. If we learnt tolerance instead of judgement and prejudice. If we understood religion is a choice we all get to make rather than expecting others to follow our faith. If we treated each other as equals and with kindness and compassion. If we knew that our insecurities were masquerading as ego because we are too scared to face our own fears. Hating others is simply a projection of the hate you feel for yourself.

So as we mourn this world that is currently so f*cked up it’s hard to see a way out of this mess, how about we each pledge to be better? It has to start somewhere, so maybe it starts with each of us.

Let’s be better humans.

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