it's gonna take the man in me to conquer this insansity

For whatever reason, surely for none at all, I get to eat robustly flavorgul foods and drink fine imported beers. I get to listen to refined and moving symphonies that put me at peace with my eyes closed, and also the life beat that drums in my soul beating out passionate emotions while my eyes stay open, quietly cutting in every direction at the world around me. My intimate moments are accompanied by the romanticism of literature and films, letting me see the beauty of a relationship that gives two people shelter from the storm, an unspoken unity as they look up at the stars knowing they're looking together.

When I make the effort of deconstructing how everything around me came to be, and I begin to try and let the world's problems stare me in the face, I get pulled into the abstract. How could I not - I don't even see, let alone live the rawness; the landfill diving for food scraps, the brutal rapes, or the RUF rebels swinging machetes through the wrists of men with despair in their eyes. That's not real to me, and I'm fearing more and more that the rhetoric really is just rhetoric. I'll never be able to empathize. Tupac's right, "I was given this world - I didn't make it". But it’s not the ONE world me and Bono would love to believe. Pac says "the world looks dreary when you have your eyes seeing clearly." So I try to live a truthful life, and see this world clearly. But I still see the light before the dark, look to the stars before the ground - so I see the hope right? the positivity? the possibility? No. I just don’t have the urgency, the selflesness to force myself to sacrifice all of the good feelings offered to me and do the necessary work to make myself become a tool. Look at me now i can't even read a book before I write about my little internal conflict. Like it even deserves the words.

But are all the laughs and smiles really slaps in the face to those suffering right now? I got a theory of salvation that might be able to save me from the guilt and shame of falling short in dedication and empathy.

In order to conquer this insanity we have to know what we're striving for. If our pleasures are of the essence of life; enjoying the fruits of the world, human potential in not just surviving but finding beauty, and embracing relationships that give us company and purpose, then they are not evil to indulge in. If we want bread and roses for others, we must remember it's because we want bread and roses for ourselves too. We just have to value these things enough to know that they are not meant for just us.

We are entitled to some - not all. Cut the excess. If we want chocolate then we may have to be willing to pay five dollars for a chocolate bar so that Ghanians are paid a fair price for exporting their cocoa. but then the demand decreases, and their once chief export become nothing more then the cause for inflation, and the black market grows to undercut these high prices because maybe I really want chocolate but I don't make enough at my blue collar job and I don't have the perspective to realize and trust that my prioritizing is for the greater, while some don’t have to prioritize at all, FUCK that I’m gonna get mine

and the world keeps spinning, and I'll shift these thoughts off the computer and back into mind my mind, even though I should probably be reading a book