It doesn't have to be like this.

It breaks my heart to see beauty being destroyed by us because we want it for us and only us. I do want to be happy, I truly do, but I can't turn off the despair, not when I'm surrounded by it. I'm told to relax, breathe out the toxins, clear my mind, and live in the moment, and I will feel unconditional joy, but then I have to return to the world and somehow keep my head up amid the chaos.

Live in the moment. Sound advice for me, but in that moment during which I am experiencing unconditional joy, somewhere, a woman is being raped; somewhere, a child is being shot dead; somewhere, a bomb is being dropped onto a neighbourhood; somewhere, a wife is being beaten; somewhere, a war is being planned; somewhere, a river is being poisoned. Yes, I'm focusing on the negative, but I can't help it, so long as beauty is wantonly being destroyed.

It doesn't have to be like this, for each day brings us beauty: a child enters the world, a flower blooms, a river flows, a person finds love. Beauty gives me reason to get out of bed each morning. Beauty gives me reason to stand up to the forces who aim to destroy it. Beauty gives me reason to be.

The very computer I use to write this message is soaked in blood and sweat; I'll wager the clothes on my back are, too. Beauty was destroyed so that I could live in luxury. The irony of it all is, had it not been for the rape and pillage of lands both domestic and foreign, I would not have this voice, though I may not have needed it.

As I write this, I can hear yelling from my neighbours' apartment. This is nothing new, which makes it that much more unsettling, for it seems to see no end. If only they could see what they're doing to each other, to themselves, with all this hostility. I don't blame them, though; the world is cruel, it is cold, and it is a shame, because it doesn't have to be.