“Justice” or “Just Us”

I was obsessed with my professional self. My work was meaningful to me. Not because of the employment of it but because of the understanding and the access to cultures, travel and other ways of life. In every job I held, I sought things out for the learning. This is how I made sense of the world I traveled in. I love travel. I love meeting new people. I love exploring. My heart is that of a nomad.

As a child, I was never the “learn as you go” or “street smarts type”. I prefer life through books, knowledge through formal study. The thrill of discovery by way of the lens of wondrous people’s words. There are things I look forward to, the sheer joy of seeing via the minds of others as expressed on paper.

For the adolescent who dreams of making an impact on the world, books were my way of accumulating thousands of years of lived knowledge. My world view could take form with a variety of inputs. The way I could bear witness to people overcoming adversity by reading about it. The privilege of living other people’s lives without actually experiencing adversity. I had a window into the past without being a part of its madness alongside its sadness.

Throughout young adulthood I remained rigid and solidified my beliefs. I relied on the paper analysis and tested my assessments. My firm belief in right, and justice, integrity and the base goodness of our being, was unshakeable. I could read about the cruelty of life, but be distant from it. I could understand that there was evil, but not be locked into it.

I could believe human beings and societies evolve, and that change is inspired by an inherent need for justice.

So of course, it was only a matter of time before the Universe adjusted its methodology.

In the recent years where I have been grounded from travel, banished from concentrating enough to be able to read. I’ve had a lot of time to live, and think and experience hurt. Hurt and trauma and pain. I have seen first hand how the choices of others in the past led to my suffering in the present, and thus the impact on what I do and will do in the future.

My soul requires justice. I’m unable to move on without someone being held accountable. For the harm they’ve caused to me. For the losses my family now have to endure. For the suffering of my ancestors in the millions. For the damage they intentionally inflicted on the lives of billions. For the wealth they’ve accosted in the trillions.

Their souls require recompense, restitution, reparations.

Now I question, what is justice really?

Will things really never change? Have things ever changed?

What is there to life?

Is it really just a matter of us?

We’ll never really know how the future makes out. But I know for a fact, that what we do now, matters.

So I will.