Dear Humanity: A Letter to the World We've Become

I see a lot of blind, lost, misguided people in this world.

People who talk, but don’t show.

People who hear, but don’t listen.

People who think, but don’t feel.

People who share, but don’t care.

People lost as to what to do, but keep on doing it.

People who have nothing to say, but keep on saying it.

People of great passion, but destitute in compassion.

People of lavish zeal, but exiguous patience.

People with big mouths, but little ears.

People with fragile egos, but unshakeable arrogance

People for whom the destination is more important than the journey.

People for whom the vehicle is of greater value than the company.

People who always have a problem for every solution.

People who are internally sick, yet reject every provided medicine.

People who cry out for help, yet abuse every helping hand.

People stranded in an ocean of pain, yet refuse to be rescued.

People who seek without, that which already exists within.

People who, in their endeavors, are lost, chasing their demons no matter the cost.

People who declare their convictions emphatically, yet fail to relate to another soul empathetically.

People who do not even try to be another person’s peace, but choose to be their problem.

People who, even when they do listen, listen only to reply—not to understand the other side.

People for whom winning an argument is more important than preserving a relationship.

People who live like collectors of hurt, placing them in scrapbooks of resentment.

People who petition for global peace, but are yet to make peace with their own past.

People who march for justice in public, yet perpetrate heinous injustices in private.

People who shamelessly disregard others, yet brazenly tout their altruism.

People who unscrupulously use others to get to the next rung of the ladder, only to throw them under the bus once they’ve taken what they wanted from them.

People who have no problem turning others’ hearts and feelings into their own playground, all the while griping about their distrust.

People who architect endless dramas for others, as if they were the movie director of others' suffering.

People drunk on a version of the world that no longer exists—fearful of the uncharted territories of the future.

People who, as RFK said, fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past — which never existed in the first place.

People who want to control everything but themselves.

People who choose to be slaves to the negative voices that poison their minds with lies from within, even as the truth stands right before them.

People who choose to be blind to the light of truth, blotting it out for fear it'll expose the imperfections behind their masks.

People lost in an inescapable labyrinth, yet harangue others about where they should go and how they should live.

People who keep on growing older, without ever growing up.

People who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, citing formal statutes as expedient excuses.

People too immature to own their mistakes, yet never miss a chance to point out someone else’s.

People who refuse to shed light on their own behavior, yet keep whining about being lost in the darkness.

People who love pointing fingers, yet seldom extend a loving hand.

People addicted to playing the victim—moaning about how others are so “insensitive”

People who won’t hesitate to call others “disrespectful” when they're simply not allowed to mistreat them any longer.

People who disown their role in the suffering of others—yet rarely provide comforting solace.

People who allege their devotion to uplifting others, while doing nothing but singing their own praises.

People unwilling to sacrifice their inflated egos, yet declaring themselves the story heroes.

People under a cursed enchantment, spellbound by the avatars they contrived,

no longer able to sense their soul—which, buried deep within them, couldn't survive.

People who use their hurt to hurt others.

People who embrace cruelty while asking for grace.

People who mercilessly crush others, all while bemoaning the world’s brutality.

People carrying profound wounds yet refusing to help others heal theirs—instead, inflicting their pain onto others.

People rich in intelligence, but lacking in wisdom.

People with a sense of mission, yet astray.

People who think they’re on the right path, yet fear the truth.

People who dread being disillusioned, out of fear of facing the lies they tell themselves.

People terrified of venturing into the darkness, yet still turn away from the light.

People blinded by their emotions, yet refusing to lift the blinders off their hearts.

People who continue to mistake the map for the territory, while mindlessly refusing to heed the clarion calls warning them of the consequences.

People adrift in an endless, borderless sea of past suffering and nostalgia, stumped as to how to find their way out, yet perversely refusing to listen to those who offer directions.

People terrified of their vulnerable humanity.

People who are human and make mistakes, yet ruthlessly punish others for being human too.

People who know they're imperfect, yet refuse to allow themselves—or others—the opportunity to work on their imperfections.

People deeply misguided in their minds, yet still preach directions to others.

People who love to preach, but scarcely practice.

People enslaved to their fear, while championing love.

People suffocating from the rising smoke of their anxiety, only to use it as an excuse to extinguish others’ ideas.

People who put others down, then cry about why they themselves never rise.

People entangled in storms of suffering they have sparked, only to embroil others in the same unceasing tsunamis thrashing them.

People of intense interest, but little integrity.

People of eminent esteem, but no respect.

People of admirable diligence, but devoid of dignity.

My friends, we live in deeply paradoxical times: a world of guided missiles, but misguided men.

We have wider vistas, but narrower viewpoints.

We have longer roads, but myopic visions.

We have big mouths, but little ears.

We have taller structures, but shorter tempers.

We have higher formal degrees, but lower human sense.

We have more knowledge, but less judgment.

More experts, but less solutions.

We strive to cleanse the air, but not our souls.

We’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We have higher wealth, but lower morals.

We have machines that can calculate massive numbers, but souls that are broken by tiny words.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.

We have normalised dehumanizing others.

We have desensitized our souls and made ourselves hard, and mean, and uncouth, and unkind.

We know too much, and feel too little.

It is high time we realised that we must feel for one another if we are to survive with dignity.

We live in a world where funerals are more important than the deceased;

marriage more than love;

parties more than the celebrated;

power more than purpose;

money more than meaning;

stories more than the heroes;

success more than significance;

fame more than fulfilment;

glamour more than grace;

wit more than wisdom;

sexuality more than spirituality;

speeches more than the message;

and words more than their meaning.

We are gradually drowning in a packaging culture that despises content.

We drown in the turbulent waters of what we think we cannot live without, only to lose sight of the truth we already bear within.

We continually — and unwittingly — mess up the good things we have by seeking something “better,” only to end up with something worse, and thus with less than what we started with.

And it behoves us to remind ourselves and each other that there is more to life than survival: dignity, integrity, love, grace, peace, trust, truth, kindness, generosity, compassion, harmony, courage — all of them are of incomparably greater value.

As MLK warned us:

“We can choose to live together as siblings, or perish together as fools.”