There are just too many horrors people are enduring, experiencing and witnessing these days

BY STEVEN KASZAB

I write for the Toronto Caribbean News, so part of my job is keeping up with the events of the world. It is becoming more and more difficult to watch any media device these days. There are just too many horrors people are enduring, experiencing and witnessing these days, and my mind goes into overload with many differing ideas and subjects to write about.

What further subjects my thoughts to attempts to escape my mission, is that I know people on both sides of these various conflicts, oppression and events that it becomes a personal-emotional pull on my conscience and thoughts. I found myself dreaming about my time in Israel, Jordan and Lebanon years ago, the terrors of the time and some distinct pleasures too. I know Israelis and Palestinians who are fighting at this very moment, some of them friends, and one family member. It reminds me of The American Civil War, where brother and father fought members of their own families, American vs American. A horrible waste of a generation, fanning the flames of regional and racial hate for generations to come.

My wife found me in my lounge with my eyes closed, in the dark. She is worried about me, I can tell. World events have shaped my working life, where once very busy with lots of active clients, we are now going month to month with the hope that the economy and our sector of business improves. It will not. A recession will come, and the only question I have is how deep and destructive it will be?

Nearing retirement I stand often alone with all the pressures of a lifestyle, health and family matters to maintain and manage. I am ill, elderly, but youthful in thought and mind, with many hopes and dreams to try to achieve, yet my energy seems to drain an hour after waking, and my joints fill with pain. My attitude is optimistic, but questioning, forever trying to find the news under some rock, hidden and waiting to be found. I write about the one thing I truly know, the activities, feelings and routines of my fellow citizens. All people are the same no matter their: ethnicity, religion or nation.

I am reminded of shylock’s analysis of life, the famous poem, “if you prick us, do we not bleed?” The only difference of significance is one’s color of skin, and our attitude (the mind). I have attempted to treat all the same, rich and poor, sick and athletic etc. Everyone has talents and gifts to share with others in the community, if only they act upon them. I look at the conflicts in the news, Israeli-Hamas, the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict, the 23-armed conflicts around the world, and I feel something inside of me hide away. Perhaps it is my optimism, hope for a better future, what my children will have to endure as they grow old.

Depression as a clinical illness has taken the world by storm, along with hate and fear. I have railed against fear all my life, as it has molded and transformed people, nations and cultures for millennia. Am I depressed, or simply dissatisfied with how my life is progressing, how the world is turning on its historic cycle, or fearful of what the future has for us all.

Is all this killing, dying, illness and terror a response to another’s assault upon us? Have I been pricked and poisoned? Sure, I have been tickled. Wronged, sure I believe we all have been wronged in some way.

MAID continues to end the lives of Canadians daily; gun violence continues to be a media sensation too. People just don’t get along, do they? Or do they! I believe there is a darkness in this world, perhaps spiritual, psychological in nature that is very contagious, spreading with the help of the media and word of mouth. Be it hate, fatalism, apathy, or greed it can be understood, and its projection changed. Creating is better than destruction, co-existence better than social torment.

Can what is good in us win over the destructiveness before us in the media each day of our lives? If we turn off all the media screens, and just live our lives to the fullest, treating each other as we’d like to be treated, can we be happy, energetic and wise?