A lurking fear

I would not want to bring a child into this world. I fear for the day when I have another life to take care of, when I live in terror for my own — every breathing moment. Some call it paranoia, some deny the growing and developing existence of evil in our society altogether and some choose to straight up attack my views, not realising that these are the exact reasons why I harbour fear in the first place.

When I was younger, I imagined the world to be a promising map I could study or a beautiful park that lay in wait for me to explore it. As I have grown up, the map began to emphasise upon its borders, every boundary getting darker and more pronounced. The park I once wished to traverse grew dark and more sinister, inhibiting any attempt at further understanding or exploration. Lines and landmarks turned to chained boundaries and war zones with casualties strewn across paths callously, simply labelled collateral damage.  What I believed to be a free pathway for one and all turned out to be a broken path of thorns, screams and a work of nightmares.

I tried to stop watching the news a while back but I received constant updates through social media, regardless. Every week, if not everyday, we wake up to a new tragedy. Whether it’s Orlando, Istanbul, Syria or Pakistan — everyday, we watch as deaths become numbers in articles or on the news. Lives become headlines, individuals become statistics and families are reduced to nameless mourners. It seems like every last bit of warmth, humanity and positivity has been sucked out of our world and tossed into a vortex from which it cannot be retrieved. The same can be said for any ray of hope that may have existed. These are bleak times. Their tides are sweeping us up in all its carnage and changing us into beings we can no longer be proud of.

We are angry all the time. Our rage, our words and our actions are murderous — physically, if not mentally. We drive people to suicide in the name of religion, societal expectations or by projecting our personal insecurities onto weaker minds and hearts. We drive people to insanity and depression on a daily basis by the brutality that now lies within our words and hearts. Our toxic tongues and relentless minds are our weapons, which we shamelessly use to destroy anyone we consider weak, however major or minor the way may be. And we blatantly deny it. We think we are right, that our views are the only correct perspectives and that we must fight, ridicule and destroy to whatever end in order to keep them intact. Our anger surfaces on social media platforms, where we take to attacking people we do not agree with from behind the safety of a screen. After all, it is just our opinion we need to get across. Why would it matter to us about the effect our tone and condescending diction have on anyone else.

Where is this sense of superiority, coupled with anger coming from? Why are we this bitter? It is convenient to change our profile pictures and write statuses talking about tragedies that tale place on a larger scale, but it is hypocritical to do so when you are busy creating tragedies in the wake of your words. How can we comment on large-scale murders when we murder parts of people everyday, simply through our callous actions. We may not be sinners to the same degree, but a sinner will always be a sinner.

I fear for the day when I bring a child into this world — with his or her eyes gleaming with hope and promise, only for it to be murdered with bouts of despair, belittling and destruction of their soul. I fear for the future and I fear for all of us.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 22^nd, 2016.

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