Rain doesn’t start as a drop; a cloud begins to empty its content of moisture in a torrential release, like a damn breaking. But no matter how hard or how much it rains we feel it one drop at a time. When we soak, we are soaked by individual droplets: small pieces of that release broken from the whole and falling desperately towards earth. When rivers rise and flood, and land tears away from the slopes of mountains, when the sea engulfs us – it all happens one drop at a time. So we too, a living mass of billions of people, do not destroy as a whole, do not irrigate as a whole, we do so individually. All the horrors of which we are capable are enacted one person at a time. All the good that we bring, all the beauty we create, is done so by individuals. And just like each drop of water is indistinguishable from any other, though unique it may be, so we too are just single parts of a whole – a whole from which we are not really all that different.
Each person, regardless of race or creed, carries within themselves all of what a human being is capable. Our being a part of the greater mass ensures that we are just a small, yet an exact, manifestation of humanity’s whole. The power to inundate, the power to create and grow, the power to choose which of those paths are ours, is something contained within each of us as well.
The water, once released, once born, immediately takes on a course towards earth. That course is altered from the second of release by dozens of factors, like wind, other drops of water, pressures rising from earth itself. So we too, from the moment we are born have our trajectories constantly affected by our environment. But just as the water has no choice but to eventually hit earth and bring its effect, whether that of destruction of irrigation, regardless of influence on where it will land, so we too, inevitably, leave our mark upon the planet.
There is only one difference between us and the rain, similar to the difference between ourselves and the other species who live on this rock, and that is choice. Our trajectory is hard to break, the influences of the world, with its winds and pressures and other peoples, are hard to navigate, but in the end we are capable of doing so. We are capable of choosing our effect, we are capable of deciding where on this planet we will land. That is an enormous power that each individual holds. No matter how insignificant we feel, there is no denying that we are a very real part of a whole which cannot function without us, that when we are gone, or when we decide to leave, we must be replaced for the whole to continue to function.
Regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or any other “something” we choose to differentiate ourselves, the fact remains that we came from the same place, and that we are going in the same direction and we will bring our effect to bear. For any person to claim they are the right form of human, is for a droplet of rain to say it is more rain than another. We come from the same place, though our manifestations are slightly different, at the end of the day we are just copies and mutations of the same genetic code. Even from the point of religion, if we are all children of God, then we cannot be made wrong. There are no sins worse than others, except for the 7 deadly sins, none of which say anything about sex, religion, race, sexual preference or anything else that defines who we are – the deadly sins only define choices and actions. There is no religion on this planet which claims that the “sins” of who we are, are worse than the sins of our choices.
This makes who we are irrelevant. The only important thing to consider about a human being when deciding whether they are good or evil, right or wrong, is their actions toward our home and toward each of us. Does it matter whether the person who saves your drowning child is a homosexual Mongoloid Christian male, or a heterosexual Caucasoid Jewish female, or a bi-sexual Negroid Muslim hermaphrodite? Will you be any less grateful to one than another?
As long as we continue to judge people based on aspects of their lives over which they have little to no control, we continue to keep open the doors of inequality and injustice – which are the only things which stand in the way of our development as a species. If today White, Christian males are in power, but the doors for inequality are open, it means one day some other group will take control. And as long as those doors stay open, the grip of control will continue to shift. This does nothing to improve our lives, it only perpetuates actions, like war, theft of natural resources, and exploitation, which destroy lives. And if we are willing to destroy the lives of others so that we may save our own, or worse, to make ours better, then we again, in the face of truth and justice, blatantly state that though we come from the same place, though we are part of the same whole, one droplet of rain is more important, is better, than another.
To me that is more than nonsensical, it is idiotic. And if we believe people who make such claims, claims which are contrary to logic and contrary to what is claimed to be the word of God, what does that make us? If we stand by and allow pure, exposed, lies to be thrown in our face, when we are fully aware that they are lies, what does that make us? If we continue to benefit from things which we have not earned, realities for which we have not worked to create – which are so simply because of where and from whom we were born, what kind of people are we? When we have to continue to fight to grant individual groups equal rights, one at a time, how stupid does that makes us? If we realize that we cannot discriminate against one group (i.e. Women, Blacks…), how have we not come to the conclusion that we cannot discriminate against anybody? We claim to be intelligent, but have remained blind to that simple truth for thousands of years. Instead of focusing time, money and energy on the very real problems of our world, we continue to waste our resources battling over something which is self evident: equality.
We have in our hands the greatest tool yet created by man: the ability to communicate with the world – without censorship. Can we, for a moment, take that ability, leave the cats and the memes alone for just a day, and proclaim our realization of the truth of our equality. Can we take a moment and in a voice almost every person on the planet will hear, say that we are not the fools we seem to be, that we know the truth, and that we will have no more lies? Can we say to each other that we realize how important each of us are, that each of us deserves the respect of everyone else simply for the reason that we, each of us, are human? That the choices we make, the decisions we enact on the world and each other, are the only thing which matter and determine the quality of our humanity? And that anyone who says otherwise is an enemy of humanity, and therefore an enemy of each one of us, and that we will not stand to have enemies controlling our lives and the future of our race.
I believe we can because I believe in the fact that deep down inside each one of us, beyond the greed and jealousy and misunderstanding and unfounded hate, we are capable of every good which is possible for our species. I believe that within each of us there lies justice, truth and respect. I believe that we all have the ability to change and grow and know what is right, not what is easy, but what is right.