Sparks

Everyone needs help sometimes. Everybody falls, and sometimes we fall hard. Sometimes we fall far. Sometimes we land broken and bleeding and, with tear-streaked faces, we barely dare to look to the sky, because sometimes, even hope hurts. Sometimes we can't imagine an upward slope even existing, let alone the effort required to ascend it. Sometimes it hurts to even breathe.

And in those times, our faith is shaken. Not just our religious faith - no, if only that! Our faith in the system; our faith in people; our faith in those who say that maybe, if we just helped each other, the world would be a better place.

When we fall, when we are shaken, when we rage helplessly against the chains of a world that seems indifferent or even overtly cruel - those are the times when we most need each other. On our knees, bleeding into the dirt, crying, alone in the dark - that is when we need a hand. Someone to stop by the wayside where we've stretched out to die, to reach out their hand, to look us in the eye, to speak with honesty and understanding and, above all, with love.

My mother always says that society, that the world, cannot change until people start truly helping one another. That the darkness has a foothold as long as we are indifferent to the needs of every other of us.

A friend told me last week that all human actions are selfish. Certainly, that argument can be made. But when we only help others because it makes us feel good, or to have a shot at scholarships, or to mark off hours required for a specific degree program, we do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Altruism is the key. Until people do right because it is right, nothing is better. Sure, someone has a coat, or a meal, or whatever - and that's good. But nothing fundamental has changed. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is improved. Nothing is altered. It can take no more than a moment to change the world for the better - but it has to be exactly the right kind of moment, the right effort, for the right reasons, and on the right scale.

This is our world now, young ones. Our world. Our place. Our time. Our responsibility. We can choose to ignore it, or we can choose to take it back, to make it ours, to mold it according to our virtues, not our vices, and leave it a better place than it was when we arrived. Maybe. if enough of us share such heart, we can start a cultural revolution. Maybe, just maybe, we can improve not just the situations of individuals, but the minds of millions.

We all need help sometimes. We all fall, and we all need help to stand again. Maybe all it takes is a kind word, or a smile, or a gentle encouragement. Maybe it takes more than that. Maybe it takes some concrete alteration in circumstances. People need all different kinds of help when they hit the bottom. And there are all different kinds of bottom to hit. I don't know the answers. I don't have the map to a better world. I think I know what it takes - but I don't know what I'm prepared to give.

All I know is that I held a $258 pair of jeans last week, and was appalled. I was horrified that people could buy such things - such useless, frivolous, overpriced things! - while people in Tent City, not fifteen miles away, didn't have food, or a coat, while they live and sleep under the Colorado Street Bridge. Martin Luther King, Jr., said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." He was right. Nothing can be right anywhere until it is right everywhere.

Then I realized that I'm a hypocrite. I drive a convertible, for God's sake. It's been eating me inside that I have so much luxury when others don't even have the bare necessities. I'm a selfish person, and I've been living a selfish life. I've been given much, and I might not have much in the material way to give, but I can give of myself. I can give my words. I can give my time. I can give my ear, and my pen.

It is time for me to start giving. God gave me the written word as my greatest strength, my most beloved power - so it is what I will give. Starting next week, I will find someone who has no other voice. I will hear their story, and I will record it here, along with their needs. These will not be people abstract in number or location. They will be people at home, in Colorado Springs, the center of my selfish indifference.

If you, dear, dear reader, wish to join with me in giving, listen to these stories. My words can do nothing alone in the ether; they do not exist until they are read. Stories are mere sounded air until someone hears them.

And sometimes all it takes is for someone to listen.

-Avalon.

The Official Relocation

Welcome to my first official blog. I was weary of Facebook owning everything I posted and wrote, and here I can retain full rights to my words, so the move was an obvious one.

I can't promise that these blogs will contain anything more than long-winded musings on the world as I see it, and those only occasionally supported by evidence. I can't promise to write every day, or even every week - it's not so regularly that I have any thoughts I deem valuable enough to record for posterity. Or for the 1.5 people who read me. But for you, dear reader and a half, this is my new soapbox. Careful; just waxed it.