It could have been me
So the news, such as there is, from Iran has hit me really hard. I said some of this before in a comment, but I got hit by it again and wanted to say it here.
I started reading the Iran news because my friends were posting about it and it sounded big. What I read struck me with a strong force of empathy. I found myself imagining what would have happened back in November if, with all the polls leaning strongly Obama, McCain had been announced as winning the election, including Massachusetts, and then this had been followed by a series of report suggesting that the election had been rigged and the cellphone network going down. There were a few moments before that election when I asked myself "what would you do if this election got stolen?" and I concluded that I would have been out in the streets protesting, just like those kids in Iran. That was the emotional reaction I had to reading the news.
I was checking the news again today and I remembered a song from my childhood. It goes like this:
It could have been me, but instead it was you
and it may be me, dear sisters and brothers,
before we are through,
but if you can work for freedom,
freedom, freedom, freedom
If you can work for freedom, I can too.
I still resent that I was exposed to such atrocities as described in that song, even in the abstract, at the age of 5 or 6, and listening to it still makes me cry. However, at some level, being raised to value freedom stuck. Activism didn't, perhaps because of the hypocrisy I saw in my own activist parents. Eventually, I walked away from them when they tried to deny me the freedom the told me to fight for.
Now, I live in a place and time where my freedom isn't being curtailed in any noticeable way. I can say and do what I want with out any real free of being hurt, beaten, imprisoned or killed. Personally, I don't even run the risk of losing a job or a home and ending up in poverty, nor the risk of being ostracized from my community. (Thank you community for being awesomely inclusive!)
It's taken me a long time to realize just how safe I am, and it saddens me greatly that so many, even some close to me, don't share that freedom. And I'd like to give everyone more of the good that I have, but often I don't know how. And that's just where I am right now.
I started reading the Iran news because my friends were posting about it and it sounded big. What I read struck me with a strong force of empathy. I found myself imagining what would have happened back in November if, with all the polls leaning strongly Obama, McCain had been announced as winning the election, including Massachusetts, and then this had been followed by a series of report suggesting that the election had been rigged and the cellphone network going down. There were a few moments before that election when I asked myself "what would you do if this election got stolen?" and I concluded that I would have been out in the streets protesting, just like those kids in Iran. That was the emotional reaction I had to reading the news.
I was checking the news again today and I remembered a song from my childhood. It goes like this:
It could have been me, but instead it was you
and it may be me, dear sisters and brothers,
before we are through,
but if you can work for freedom,
freedom, freedom, freedom
If you can work for freedom, I can too.
I still resent that I was exposed to such atrocities as described in that song, even in the abstract, at the age of 5 or 6, and listening to it still makes me cry. However, at some level, being raised to value freedom stuck. Activism didn't, perhaps because of the hypocrisy I saw in my own activist parents. Eventually, I walked away from them when they tried to deny me the freedom the told me to fight for.
Now, I live in a place and time where my freedom isn't being curtailed in any noticeable way. I can say and do what I want with out any real free of being hurt, beaten, imprisoned or killed. Personally, I don't even run the risk of losing a job or a home and ending up in poverty, nor the risk of being ostracized from my community. (Thank you community for being awesomely inclusive!)
It's taken me a long time to realize just how safe I am, and it saddens me greatly that so many, even some close to me, don't share that freedom. And I'd like to give everyone more of the good that I have, but often I don't know how. And that's just where I am right now.