Awake!

It has been too long a lapse since any words have passed here, too turbulent a period for any of my thoughts to be collected coherently to serve some eclectic purpose or other. Too caught up in the quagmire of my own demise and disillusionment, bereaving my own selfishness and solitude, I like many others barely noticed the world continue to revolve painfully on an axis that bleeds dry.

It revolves for no one, no single physical entity is the focal point of its perpetual revolution; it spins for existence alone.

We are the masters of our existence and emotions, but merely to the extent until which our free-will ceases to operate and influence. In the grander scheme of things insular love, and conversely pain, are about as meaningful as a singular raindrop in the drought of emotion. We all feel as humans do, but only by feeling collectively do we progress ourselves as well as society.

I once quoted Guevara to someone dear to me where he said " when they say a thousand and one times that we're dreamers, that we're romantics, that we are incorrigible idealists, that we think the impossible; then a thousand and one times we must answer that yes, we are." If I had lost my way since then, I have regained my faith.

I am a revolutionary and this is a call to arms.

In the comfort of homes, resting negligently in front of our television and computer screens, we are the audience that fuels the war in Gaza. At the time of writing, 700 Palestinians and 20 Israelis have been killed, while we shake our heads at the state of the world and change the channel. We read in the newspapers about the merciless slaying of innocents as we heave a heavy sigh and flip over to the sports section. We hear about various aid agencies, read emails asking for aid and allow the guilt to wash away thinking that there is definitly someone else willing to commit the energy we've just spent at the locak mamak.

But that has never been the case. We are the soldiers that shoot Palestinian children, we are the bombs that destroy civilian buildings, we are Hosni Mubarak suffocating Gaza out of existence. As we remain complicit, we the audience lives vicariously on the war, becoming the images we see and witness.
The very apathy that drives our inaction is drawn from the same well that steels those soldiers into murder, the same lack of emotion that morphs us into drones of war and entertainment.

AWAKE!

This is a call to become what we were born to be, humans who feel love and pain as real as bomb fragments that pierce the bone, as reactive as phosphorus on skin. This is not anything that requires extraordinary capabilities, merely to be as we were created and become one with humanity. Put aside your political affiliations and religious divisions to come together on a humanitarian platform before the blood that drives the world spills onto our hands. Do not rank amongst those who stood by and watched it happen; be counted alongside people who have found the heart to care about the darkness that sweeps the world.

It is not for us to leave it to someone else, to complain about the affairs of the world, remain hesitant, to pass judgement thousands of kilometers away and go back to the inertia of our privacy. Our time here is limited and all that really counts is with what virtue we live our lives by, how well we spent our years bettering ourselves, the people around us and our planet For once, leave aside your concerns and rise for what good there is left in this world, for only together will there be a revolution.