"That's when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I stated crying in pain.''I'm sure I'm not the only one who recognizes those feelings and indeed knows them intimately. Sure, I've never lost a loved one to this war but we've all lost something. What's become of our country? What's become of our prized rights? What's become of our so-called, "moral responsibility"? Where is the American Dream now? What is the American Dream now?
I've been bemoaning for a while the complacency that has slipped into our society. Short of implementing a draft, how do we recapture the passion that accompanied Vietnam? Nothing is capable of shocking us anymore and even the most disgusting corruption fails to bat eyes.
Earlier this week there was a speaker on the stage of the Union Theatre; Francis Bok is from Southern Sudan. He was captured at the age of 7 and forced to work as a slave for a full decade of his life before escaping "to the U.S." His speech would normally have grabbed my attention and held on. The struggle for freedom and the human propensity to never give up would normally have pulled me in. This night however, I found I wasn't able to listen. Not because I wasn't interested or felt no compassion but rather because I felt (feel) full. I felt that I couldn't bear to hear any more of the world's woes or any more tales of suffering and injustice. My inability to listen has worried me a lot.
So, how do we get back? What do we have to do? How do we engage? The "American Dream" has gone from a dream for personal betterment and a dream for our children to a dream to regain those freedoms that we once took for granted. Our nation was founded on the principles of equality and freedom but those ideals have been sacrificed in the search for safety. How many of us find ourselves wondering now who's listening to our conversations? Who's reading this post and jotting down notes? Who doesn't like what I had to say about Iran? Who's reading my emails and is it making us safer? Is it making us more engaged or turning us off. I can't listen to stories of struggle because the struggle we're all in is too all-consuming. So I ask again, how do we engage this struggle and how do we pull in the troops? We can't continue down this trail. We can't go into the future longing to first regain the past. I've felt like many, that we're waiting for the hurricane to end so we can assess the damage and think about rebuilding. It feels as if the storm is raging and all we can do is sit it out; we can do nothing to lessen the damage. We, like this post, talk in circles with no conclusion while the foundation is uprooted. What do we do?
Cindy said, "I think the state of the union is very perilous. President Bush is fighting an immoral war, and all I did was wear a T-shirt, and I'm the one who got arrested.'' It's bigger than that tho. We've all become suspects; guilty until proven innocent. We need to raise up before the damage is irreparable.
So, we ate, we saw sights that were really old and then we went home and out to dinner with some friends of Sabine's at Margaretenhof which was just as wonderful as last time.
