In the conditions that we’re living in right now, it’s difficult to comprehend why people have decided to enlarge their capacities for hatred and malice, rather than choose to uplift one another. We’re going through a global pandemic in which people are risking their lives to fight the coronavirus. But in that same time where individuals are supposed to be preventing the accumulation of more deaths, another innocent life is unnecessarily lost. I want to stress that what I am talking about isn’t political. This concerns the state of humanity. Ahmaud Arbery was simply a man who was going on a casual run, like most of us do every day. The motives behind his murder are only explained by one thing: hatred. This situation frustrated many people, including myself, but it also made me reflect on the root of all this. It made me ponder on the default state of all humans.
The mental capacity of an infant during their development is free of toxicity. The toddler is not yet capable of anxiety, self-destruction, menace, or cruelty. The toddler is quite the opposite. The toddler’s default mental state is filled with joy, laughter, and love. An infant neither worries nor can they perceive judgment and experience unacceptance. An infant is full of possibilities with the unique opportunity to enter the world with open arms – free of guile. Nonetheless, society and other forms of exposure, like the media, have plagued our minds into learning and accepting behaviors and ideologies that are detrimental to not only the world’s well-being, but our own. We must recognize how imperative it is to combat potentially harmful habits and address how we are with respect to our present state. It’s incredibly convenient and easy to continue our lives without self-evaluation and reflection. There are a lot of precarious mannerisms that are liable to lead us down a rough path, but this is where we engage in introspection.
It’s essential for us to question what’s in front of us when the world is in a rough place and when we find ourselves in challenging situations. We must actively and critically dissect why things are the way they are. We don’t need racism – that is taught. We don’t need humiliation or judgement. That is taught. We don’t need self-hatred. That is a byproduct of what we’ve been taught. With all the negativity that has been embedded into the minds of so many, there still remains an opportunity for us to unlearn old ideas and embrace new ones It may be difficult for people to leave behind their accustomed ways, and progress is definitely an uncomfortable process, but it all starts with the way we educate ourselves. We may have been taught the wrong things, but it’s incredibly vital to identify those wrongs and be open-minded to change. Even on our worst days, we are not only capable of love, but we are individuals filled with it. We must not forget about the inherent love within us – at all times.
