We will trump them with our kindness

For most of us, there are no bully pulpits. We command neither armies nor billions. There are no algorithms to do our bidding, no mastheads to shout on our behalf. We wear not crowns or robes, nor other vestments. We are not the shining stars. I am not the name on your lips.

From where we stand, it looks like the world is theirs. Owned, controlled. Some will think they have earned it, others will say they stole it. Yet, in truth, they have nothing, save what we have, which is scant. In this we are one, even as we pretend we are not.

They are not they. They are us.

We should neither envy nor revile them. Nor should we try to be like them, for they are already our mirror. Their greed, their immaturity, their pettiness. Mostly their fear. They may sprinkle themselves with gold dust, but it is still dirt. The measure of their power, their threatening might, is the extent of their weakness. Their cowardice.

Because they feel how fragile their hold is, they prefer us to fight one another. They play to our dread, our grievance, our vanity. They bribe, cajole, coerce. They offer glory, promise heaven, tell us we are right; especially when we are not.

These, we know, are false idols. Now, at last, we may be done with kneeling.

Today, we resist. Not with the standard weaponry of made-up gods and worthless flags, nor with the poison of arrogant virtue. We will not seek to take from them their mantle, to loot their gaudy treasures or mouth their excuses for cruelty. Their tantrums will not become our vengeance. Our home will not be trashed to ape their gilded vulgarity.  

We will, instead, trump them with our kindness. With this simple recognition – our bond of universal suffering – we shall span their concocted divide. When we are asked once more to trample, to rob, rape, kill, to starve, expel, ignore, or to assume that we are better…we will no longer march to such drums. We will sit down together.

Naïve, I hear them say. Wishful, impractical. Yet, what other choice do we have? More violence, more hubris, more self-destruction? Another ballroom? Another plastic toy? Why, when we truly have nothing but one another, when even love is fickle and fleeting, would we settle for the booby prize of victory and control? For the scorched empire of I.

Look at what our self-obsessions demand of us and ask if they are worth it. Then, should the man-baby kings and trillion dollar tyrants implore you to believe you have no choice, show them otherwise. With kindness.