Age of doom.

Before you read this let me give you some content. I am working on a story which starts with a school shooting, the lead character survives after killing two shooters and is named the hero. Basically the story follows her journey as she faces a lot of problems and as she gets over the trauma of the event along with dealing with her past, after which she is forced to give a speech at a school event written by her principal. The speech is superficial, diplomatic and points fingers at a lot of people, blaming them for the shooting so that no one blames the schools security. 

She being the badass she is, changes the speech. Shaina is one of the deceased students,James and Tom are two students who were involved with the terrorists. Now go ahead and read this. It seemed legit after all the horrible mass killing news I've been reading about and watching in the news.

"People might think I've been through a lot, but that's just the exaggerated truth. Or rather the lie. I was born in a secure home, I was born with a family, I have friends, I have food, clothes, water and education. I have all the necessities, in fact I have more than I need. Most of us sitting here have all of the above. But what's the point? Because while you crib about stumbling on a street side, while you complain about having a bad cold, or while you curse because you spilt your coffee on your shirt, there's people starving to death, people dying of cold because they don't have clothes to wear. There's kids born beside the ashes and remains of the dead that were once their family. There's kids being handed guns at the age of 3 to protect themselves while you played with your precious hot wheels race course, which now that I think about will be of no advantage to you in your whole life. 

I am a survivor, I am lucky, I am brave, I'm a savior, these are the words I've been branded with. Words that have surrounded me the last couple of months. But I refuse to accept them. I am nothing but an anomaly, a by chance, an event whose odds were high, I am meaningless , I am undeserving and I am a murderer. In a way we all are. We are privileged with life, the life that we misuse, whether it's sitting in front of our television sets and blaming someone's religion, sex, caste, creed, nationality, the God that they believe in for their horrible actions or whether we are the people who cause havoc in the world by killing in the name of religion, sex, caste, creed, nationality, the God that we believe in, revenge or justice, what is the difference between us all? Evil is not born or created. We arents born good or bad, it's a path we choose, that defines us, one simple choice that will brand you forever canceling out all the good you ever did. 

Who here knows Shaina Woods? Of course you all do. She was one of the 7 students shot on 12th September. Who here knows Tom Jennings or James Barn? Of course you all do. They were two of the 7 shooters who killed the 7 students and injured many, both emotionally and physically. But did anyone know that Shaina wanted to be a researcher in oncology and dreamt of finding the cure to cancer? Did anyone know James wanted to become a lawyer and a gay rights activist? I bet no one did. Because their dreams were taken away from them the moment they decided to enter school, our second home, on September 12th. Tom and James were kids, my age, who were relentlessly bullied and tortured for the prejudices that you all send your kids with to high school, to college, to the world. So in a way doesn't that make you responsible too? Then why do you sit on your comfortable sofas, blaming the world and others for something you have a second hand in? Who are you, to label Shaina woods as nothing but a victim because she was so much more than just that.

People die everyday, in accidents, diseases, calamities and mass killings. And we remember each  of these inauspicious events for the rest of our lives, we name these dates as bloody milestones just like 12th of September. But why does something as random and unfair as death get to ruin these days for us, why does it hold the power to take someone's right to have a good day because it was supposed to be the national day of mourning? I guess that's because we never forget, we never forget the terrible things, do we? How easy it is to focus on the bad and ignore the good. How easy it is to want revenge instead of peace. How easy it is to take lives than to forgive and forget. 

If only putting on a pair of rose tinted glasses would be as easy as that. The world would be so much better.

Carl Sagan said- 'think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of another corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatred. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self importance, the delusion that we have some privelged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come to save us from ourselves.' 

No one is coming to save you, no god, no divine power, no cosmic coincidence, no revelation. We all stand alone in this war that we wage against our own kind. We aren't doomed, but our choices sure as hell are. 'Sure as hell' , odd phrase isn't it? No one ever says 'sure as heaven' . Hmm. I guess we all know if there exists a hell that we all fear and we know we all belong there, surely. 

But I believe it's not too late to change that. Oblivion and death are inevitable, but our lives even though limited hold much greater power than death, If you choose wisely. Stop dreaming about money, comfort, luxury and dream bigger, dream for the world because to dream is a privelage only humans have. And to confine this privelage to yourselves is indeed selfish. Empathy, love, passion, is what we need more, spread it. Don't engross yourself over your problems alone, emphasize on others because we are so self absorbed that we miss out on the pain people carry around us and go through. These people become max, Tom and James in time and rob you of your children because no one heard their screams. Open your ears, open your eyes because years from now, when you stand in the apocalyptic wastelands surrounded by rotten skin and bones with no light, there will be only darkness to open your eyes to.

Make this world a better place to live, not just to exist because there isn't much time left. Make the world a safer place so kids can play in their gardens without their parents watching their every move through the windows. 

Use the naive over self worst you carry as a human who has survived thousand years of change and be the reason for change."

-Seara Glass, through the rose tinted glass, (temporary wattpad novel).

After the recent Peshawar incident, I had a series of thoughts and I had to write them down. I thought it would maybe affect someone out there, anyone whose reading. Maybe. And that maybe is my first step, tiny step to a change that I hope grows into something big someday.