Are We Gonna Make it?

When I decided to make fantasy the style of writing I wanted to concentrate on, I had to stop and wonder about society itself. As people, we are a most complicated bunch. We divide ourselves into categories of people that we believe will be accepting of us. But little do we realize that the more we do this, the larger the divide becomes between us all.

I’ve had conversations with friends before on racism, religion, politics, cultural differences between them and myself. Through these conversations I have found while, yes these characteristics make us different from one another, it doesn’t really divide us. I love to find out things about different cultures or be taught a different way of thinking of something than the way I’ve been thinking it or was originally taught. That is what makes me human, that is what makes me mortal (I think).

It’s scary, however. These same divides not only split us up into the groups that society labels us, but it also creates hatred from people who would consider these groups armies for a building revolution. A revolution built on past angers for situations long past, rage for issues that were not the fault of the entering generation, or, sadly, the lines that have been drawn in sand by political figures to pin “us against them”.

Every great story has it’s own view on what it appears society to be. Tolkien did it, C.S. Lewis did it, even Shakespeare did it himself in his numerous plays. Writers will take the characteristics of people we believe fuel them and use them as the colors used to create new characters.

“What the hell are you talking about, Archangel?!”

I’m talking about this: Imagine the world if divides never existed. How would the great minds and great thinkers of literary works could have ever come up with the characters they created? All creations, even those that we consider mythical and probably impossible, must have stemmed from something that existed at one time. As stories have gone back, the evils that men do to each other because the divides they created has taken as many lives as writers have created in their stories.

Turn on the TV today and what do you see? We see a world that is more divided than ever. People are absolutely scared out of their minds about what tomorrow might bring for them. They’re full of rage, fear, confusion, and worse of all hopelessness.

I’ve watched so much political television over the past couple of years that the constant bickering from both sides is almost too annoying and all too redundant to listen to sometimes. Through the yelling of groups like the Tea Party, the lack of political oomph from the Democratic majority, and the blatant show of obstructionism from the Republicans, the most quietest voices that are lost in the masses of people, are those that are suffering, those that drive the spirit of the people and probably the spirit of a nation, while others bicker amongst themselves about what they believe is right.

It is through these people, that Writers find the everlasting well of ideas for stories. Writer’s Block should never exist.

But I should answer my question before I end this latest blog: Are we gonna make it? The only way for me to effectively answer that question is in a story.

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Old man, Archangel, sits on his front porch bench, sipping on a cold, glass of lemonade on a nearly perfect Spring day. The smell of the freshly cut wood of the porch is still captured in the gentle breeze and fills his nose ever so aromatically. He finishes his sip and holds the glass in his hand while resting it on the swinging bench’s arm.

From his seat, he watches as the teenagers from the high school walk by his home in their groups. Sometimes large, sometimes only a pair carrying on in their pop cultured language conversations. They are young men and women of various heights, builds, and colors of skin. Time has been gentle to most of them. The problems that most of them face are trivial at best, while some of them have serious problems they carry on their faces.

And from his right, a sound of a screen door opening and a tall, man walking out in a full military dress uniform. With a duffle bag in his right hand, and his hat in the other, he walks over to Archangel and wishes him well and tells him he will return in a month’s time. There is nothing to worry about in this time. The war is over. While peace has not been declared, it’s assumed that the military will not be needed any longer to finish deals with countries that didn’t go as planned.

The soldier hands him a journal as weathered as Archangel. The solder smiles and says, “Why don’t you tell me how it ends before you never get the chance?” He takes a few steps off the porch, then into a car and drives off into mystery. A piece of silk acts as marker from where the soldier left off. Archangel flips to the pages and reads a single question written by him decades ago.

February 8th, 2010
Are we gonna make it?

He rakes his fingers gently against the page with the cryptic words and a tear falls from his aged eye. Time has been cruel to the once well penned writer and so, he cannot write back the answer to the question he left himself long ago. Instead, he answers with tears in his eyes and the wisdom in his heart, mind, and soul.

“In my lifetime, I witnessed the miracles of society that we thought we may never see. I watched as a person of color was chosen to lead a nation that had fallen from greatness.

“In my lifetime, I witnessed the separation of people based on their political affiliations, their cultures, their morals, and even the color of their skin. I watched as a once great nation sank into the darkness God had given me the ability not to be born into. Instead, he gave me the ability to have a mind filled with wisdom enough to understand the evils of this ignorance.

“In my lifetime, I wrote words on paper and on a computer monitor and prayed that one day someone would read my words and change the way they look at life. Today, I read my own words and wonder how much my own life has changed.

“To those who would read this in the past and wonder about the future, I will tell you this. The world will continue. Generations will be born, leaders will be chosen, and the ignorance of our pasts will slowly be erased by the death of those who carried it with them. The rage, fear, and hated that was fueled only the the unwillingness to change that which needed to be changed, the inability to adapt to new ways of life, the heartlessness to chose greed over life will end. Color will remain as just a color, our faith will define how close we are to our God and not our religion, and money will be seen as that which can buy you all that you may want, but it will never buy you anything you need.

“Still, it is a shame that this truth has held true for those generations before me. That I must live through the suffering only to see and demand the change, but never will I have the chance to live it for myself. But still… the world will continue without me a better place than in my lifetime.”