Democracy. Freedom. Slavery. Control. Fear. Revolution. Power. Hate. Love. Hope. Change. Please. These words have been falling out of my mouth more often in these trying times and have become a permanent part of my daily vocabulary. These are words I seem to gravitate towards when all other words seem to have fallen upon deaf minds and disconnected hearts. These words, for better or worse, are more integrated than most care to admit. I ask "Don't you know how much power you have? You could change this world if you dared to." I typically receive a response of "So could you."

This, dear friends and brethren, is my puerile attempt to do so. I fear the problems that plague our planet, the ones that shape the very fabric of our beings in this day and age, refuse to budge. I fear that with every breath I take there is someone taking their last one at this very moment because the system, society, their fellow man did not take action; because we didn't offer them a helping hand, a kind word, a genuine gesture of love in their time of desperation; because we simply and sadly stood idly by, doing absolutely nothing to save them from their unasked for demise.

Now, if you know who I am, I know you might be thinking this is going to be a bunch of ranting and raving from a man trying to find meaning in his own ridiculous little life. Honestly, you might not be too far off, but I do hope it awakens something within you. Above all other human emotions on this seemingly infinite spectrum we are capable of, I wish to evoke a sense of hope. A pious conviction of sincere, honest

                                                                                                                            h o p e.

Not the kind of fabricated hope recent politicians paid good money to propagate. I hope, with all that I am made of, my words remind you that an injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere.

I feel I am always on the fence. Wrestling between giving up and giving too much of a fuck. I'm terrified I'll never see the collective human spirit reach its full potential. I'm tired and wired with caffeine. My physical frame feels the pain my mind endures every day because they are one in the same. Some say I'm too angry, too bitter, too pessimistic at times. Others just laugh and brush me off like dust from their sleeves. A few have the audacity to tell me I need to wake up. They say, "This is the world we live in. Get real kid. Life ain't fair." I kindly remind them that this is the society in which we live not our world. Our Earth mother has, is, and always will be fair, giving, and nurturing without hesitation. But she can only give so much. Allow me to remind you that we live in a world of finite resources.

Please, also allow me to state for the record that I have erected a hallowed home somewhere between my dreams and this waking life, and if I could, I'd never wake up. Because in my dreams, as in yours, anything is achievable. Treetops are like springboards and my feet refuse to falter. Every door that opens is another portal into any dimension imaginable. I have built entire eco-cities in the winks it takes my bus to get from one block to the next. I have fallen in love and fallen off cliffs and still woke to tell the tale. But bitterly by comparison, the frustrations of every day existence in this "real" world leave me shattered on the rocks below. It is these feelings that continuously dilute my dreams. Whitewashing them into nightmares. And I feel so goddamn helpless. So cheated. Cheated out of the life I was meant to have. Confusion crests over me in waves. A tide into which, at times, I feel I will be forever undertow.

Again and again my thoughts circle back around and around to why? What happened? How did everything become so fucked up? Who are we? Why have we, as a nation of strong willed, hard working people, tolerated so much for so little in return? With all the blood whipped from our backs and with all the sweat wrung from our brows why have we, as a species of unprecedented power, let the inalienable rights of the individual be defecated upon and discarded with the rest of the garbage that pollutes our lives? Why do we still choose to be so utterly disconnected from one another? Why do we choose to repeat past mistakes? Why do we choose to be barely more than scorpions in a jar; so quick to poison ourselves and everything else around us? What has our only inhabitable world in this impossibly vast universe done to us to endure such manmade pain? When will we, as a global people born free, wake from this American made nightmare of disillusionment?

I hope you feel the heaviness of my doubt in being able to achieve the changes I wish to see in this world. Can you? I sense they are as weighted as your own. I want you to read the following words henceforth s l o w l y. I want you to let these words sink into the darkest corners of your heart until you have lightened every crevice with the unbearable lightness of being. I hope, that when you wake every day from this one to the next, you are compelled to make this world into something more beautiful than what it has become. You do have a choice. There's always a choice.