Disgusting Places or Disgusting People?

Isn't this world a disgusting place to live? It is this ugly place where some police are allowed to kill freely. It is this place where kids are killed and dreams are murdered. This place is disgusting.  We would rather watch viral videos of teens fighting than take out our headphones and actually acknowledge the humanity that is sitting next to us. What's wrong with this world? Why are we forced to live in this place that celebrates the cycles of pain, despair, hatred? There is no doubt a problem.

But when I took a second look, I realized something that was alarming and discomforting. The problems of this world while messy, disgusting, and demoralizing, are carried and created by US. The sad truth is this place we live in is disgusting because WE are disgusting. We are the fundamental problem. We have pledged allegiance to violence and decadence. The ugliness doesn't belong to this place, it is ours to claim.

Let me be the first to say that I am ashamed of myself. I have at times, scrolled past tragedies posted on my timeline before. I have tried to ignore some of the violence in this world. I have chosen when and where I wanted to pay attention to the cries of the blood that has stained our grounds. I have marched at times and remained silent at times, what a shame. I am to blame. The place is not the problem I am.

Is there anyone else out there that can be honest? Anybody who has chosen when and where to be relevant? Has anyone else tried to ignore the pain that seems to rule this world? Is there one besides me?

We must all admit that we can't clean up the world until we clean up ourselves. We are the murders of justice, when we stay silent. We are the opponents of hope when we chose to not pay attention to the violence. It is us who are the ambassadors of hatred when we reject humanity. Truly the blood is on our hands, the crime scene is filled with our fingerprints, and we stand guilty.

Once we have stared at our guilty reflections in the mirror, we must rise from our vanities of self care, and selfishness and attempt to be more human. This attempt to be more human is radical in nature and revolutionary in form. We must learn that justice is not found in some secret hall of invisible laws, rather it abides in all of us as we interact with one another. Hope is not some untouchable ideal; rather it waits in the dark corner’s despair. Love is not some romanticized value that is unattainable; rather it is embedded into the core of our being. All of these things are on the inside of us, but many times we choose to live from the outside, by this I mean we let the external evils of this world extinguish our internal goodness. So then we must start this process of reclaiming humanity by living from within to combat and destroy those things that we are without. Yes, this world is disgusting but we don't have to be.