The World As We Know It MUST End Today.

The world as we know it MUST end today.

And tomorrow.

And the day after and the day after that.

We must no longer seek to simply change the world in our own visions for our own purposes , but seek to end it as we operate it now.

Today is World Aids Day and I am as I always am , ambivalent , terrified and over opinionated . But above all I am willing to work.

I am more than ever willing to work now because this past weekend has finally made me lay to rest any remaining faith I had in the process of "rebuilding".

There is no hope of rebuilding a world we have yet to see.

This Friday a man was trampled at Walmart in Valley Stream.

That's my Walmart.

Two co-workers and I were discussing it ( this was their Walmart as well) and CW1 , one of the sweetest young men I have ever known

" No TV is worth that I'd have to stop and help"

I believe him. I have seen this young man in action , I have watched him work , i believe he would and I was content to know I kept "good" company.

CW2

" No you wouldn't have , because they'd have killed you too. Even if you wanted to stop , even if you turned around to help , now matter what at some point you'd have run him over, because you would have had to , to stay alive "

My coworker did in less than three sentences made me feel like a moralizing douchebag and caused a MASSIVE CLICK in my head.

and what in the hell does this have to do with AIDS?

There is comfort in being part of the surging tide. Being part of forces beyond our control, pushed my fear and circumstance to act in ways that we " can not control". It is then even more ego pleasing to be in awe of ourselves when we somehow someway have the position act above the fray. To say we are the special kind of person that stops.

To help those beneath our feet.

To condemn one sort of person to save another. To be leaders , to be the one the one that can FINALLY "change" things.

That is not enough.

As Sudy so forcefully puts , we must be more. Not to aim for a more perfect system, a more gentler power , a more well distributed power.

Iti s about being honest with ourselves, about the lives we lead about where our ability to "help"comes from.

Where this feeling of noblesse comes from. That continued period of nothaving to worry about it, of being carried along in the tide, of the band playing on and on, of fearing what would happend if we stopped.

Of accepting.

It means that we do not take the easy way out. That we do not tell some people your suffering must go on longer so we can learn, that some peopel need breaks from never knowing suffering.

It means we m

To be honest that this will NOT BE EASY.

And it will require us to envision worlds that do not exist as we know them and NEVER HAVE. We must no longer be content that " our" standards are being met. That we feel good about the progress being made, because the voices we care about say it is so.

We must transcend the idea that every tragedy relates to us in order to be moved. India is not having it's " Own 9/11"Instead believing that every life is important to us BEFORE it is tragic. We must ask of our sisters, our brothers, our fathers and our families in all of the ways we can , and realize that we must then ask those same questions of those who are not our "family" in ways that test everyday our compassion breadth and depth of thought connecting us as human family, because everything affects them.

We must ask for more than days, more than leadership, and more than fear.

We must ask to stop trying to stay a live and instead Living. All of us.

We msut envision a world not JUST that means next year someone won't get trampled or that LESS peopel die from AIDS

It is not enough to just be the people who " don't act like that"

we must make a world where no one is so frightened and desperate that they feel the need to, and we imagine and live in a world without that fear.

we msut accept we seek to rebuild nothing

but to build anew