"My grandpa was a thief!" ...is that your legacy?
My grandpa was a thief! ...is that your legacy?
Before they got you outside to wage war against your neighbours, they made war on you, on your voice, by muting it or drowning it in the trivial. They made war on your intellect by keeping you ignorant of who you truly are, what the real history is, the real origin, who you belong to, what the name of the cradle you were born in is.
Before they ask you to kill your neighbour, they scare you with the unknown; they tell you he is a beast, non-human, and that you are the only human out there.
Before they send your sons to war, they tell you their sons are too busy doing important, noble tasks, tasks that only privileged and rich people can do.
Before they ask you to steal your neighbour’s house, bread, land, and riches, they tell you that your neighbour is the thief, the usurper, that you have the right to take back what is yours by divine order.
Before they lie to you about your neighbour, they lie to you about yourself: that you are different, that your blood is rare and blue like nobility, that you are a superior kind and only you know how to behave; that you have a mother and a father, friends, and knowledge, while the other is just a savage, a pig, a parasite, a nuisance, a fly that must be crushed. Old flies, pregnant flies, milk-toothed flies, baby flies, all must be crushed, and you have to clear the place to spread civilization.
Before they lied to you, they had to convince you that you are who you are not: that you are more than a human, and that humanity is a premium feature reserved for special people.
To ask you to kill humanity across the fence, they first had to make you kill your own humanity so you will not mirror yourself as a human in the mirror of tears of his suffering eyes.
You saw the blood of your brother, heard his screams, saw his children playing and laughing, still you considered him a fraud. You saw his blood was red, but you thought it was just ink. You saw his children dying, but you didn’t stop for a second; for you they were rats, just a little bigger and walking on two legs.
They removed your own mind and replaced it with lies and propaganda. But I know they cannot change the knowledge in your heart. You know with your heart the truth; no lie can obscure what you see with it.
And one day you will realise how wrong you were. You may lose a battle, but you will never lose the war. God made us good, and no propaganda or lies will ever keep us forever apart from our brothers. In the depths of your heart you know that the same blood is pumping through the heart of your neighbour.
Remember: you are a human. Remember you have a heart, a family, a father and a mother, and so does the other. Remember that you were friends before they called you enemies. Remember that God gave the earth for all to enjoy and that there is plenty of riches for everybody to share. Remember you cannot be happy while your neighbour lies defeated, dead in the trenches. It could have been you as well.
Realise that war is absurd and that we humans are great not for the amount of death and destruction we cause, but for the justice of our hearts, the beauty of the legacy we leave, the gift we give to our children.
What are you going to give to your children? Your neighbour’s house, land, and riches? I tell you, your nephews would spit on it and say,
”Grandpa was a thief and a criminal.”
Is that your legacy?