A Taste of Joy
Everyone, from the lowest crust of the echelon to the most noble of royalty has savored its sweetness, immersing themselves within a sensation so pure as to strip aside all rank, leaving only humanity behind. It is more than emotion, stepping beyond the superficial of sentiment, like a starburst of bliss paling everything else in its wake.
It is joy.
How could something so priceless be free? Whether from a promotion well earned to a dream long sought, joy is beyond happiness, more than excitement, away from love. It is a mash of all these – and yet more.
Relationships bounce through all spectrums and phases, but true love can find its way, each moment of joy a buoy through oceans of hardship, a shield against firestorms of imperfection, a ladder from dark wells of despair. It may be a simple conversation, a burst of honest emotion, a moment of joined reflection, or it might be more, so much more, so that the space between joyful moments seems to exist not at all, and you go from existing to truly living.
All emotions coalesce around it, burning fiercely within the hearts of the valiant in the guise of hope, waiting to burst free upon victory, when that surviving breath is drawn betwixt terror-stretched lips. The dawn first seen after enduring something beyond endurance brings with it rays of joy along with warmth, both for the body and the soul.
A child newly born smiling blindly can slash through the hardest of hearts, shining a light where none other might reach, a beam of pure joy through all hardship, whereas a simple word of thanks or praise can trigger its emergence from behind the darkest scowl, bringing a smile to a mouth long-bent in misery. One who has long walked the dark road of depression may find it hardest to find joy, but it resides there nonetheless , cloaked within wretchedness and pain, locked in a vault with only one key, but the key is still there, no matter how impossible it seems to find. And like a cure for disease it will unravel years of neglect and anguish in its wake, a scalpel made of delight, stitches twined from elation, leaving the scar of illness behind, a memory forever haunting, but harmless in the light that now shines within.
So when doubts drag you down and all seems lost, hold to the hope joy will emerge once more, for without that hope you may never truly seek it again, drowning within sorrows, raping your soul and tearing asunder a once-wonderful essence, denying it forever from the world it once loved.
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People Love To Hate People
Mistrust. Fear. Ignorance.
These all play their part in humanity’s battle to despise those who are different. For whatever reason it might be, people simply seem drawn to the urge of hating each other.
Is this the test of life?
Maybe this is the true reason for living, for us to overcome the obstacles thrown at us by a world so consumed with selfishness and move beyond it. Whatever it is, the human race is not there by a long way, but a couple of recent events in my own life certainly made me sit up and hope we can get there.
I’m once more working part-time as a bouncer in a nightclub, drawn back by the allure of hanging out with friends who are more like family. I was hauled again into a world which feels more like a home to me than anything else I have even known, faced with the potential of injury or even death each and every night I go into work, but sometimes it really feels worth the risk.
Firstly, I need to explain the clientele of the club I’m working at. It’s an Australian club and is frequented predominantly by dark people who live in the area; Aboriginals, Torres Strait Islanders, Papua New Guineans, Samoans, Cook Islanders, Maoris, and so on.
I am white.
From the outside of this scenario, most white folks would see this as a veritable powder keg set to blow, but truth be known the crowd we have in this place are possibly the best I have ever had to deal with in my seventeen years of security. The amount of respect shown to myself and the other security is phenomenal, possibly due to the amount we deal out. These folks are there to have a good time, we’re there to make sure they have a good time, and so we all get along most of the time.
Don’t get me wrong, there is still the occasional issue, but when we intervene we are usually listened to. I had a massive fight break out on the weekend just passed when a 320 pound Samoan went crazy on a couple of 220 pound Aboriginal guys. I had to grab the Samoan and drag him away, and initially he rounded on me to fight, but as soon as he recognized me he relaxed and threw his arms around me, apologizing profusely before walking out peacefully with his tree-trunk-like arm slung over my shoulders. Nobody in the crowd had intervened when we stepped in to break up the fight and kick out the guys involved, neither his friends nor the friends of the two other guys whom my two co-workers peacefully escorted out.
For those of you with no concept of nightclub life (most of you, I’m guessing), this kind of scenario is mind-boggling. To have three white guys throw out three dark guys in the midst of a crowd of around 200 other dark guys and girls without argument or further drama is unheard of, but this is seriously what happened, and it’s usually the way things pan out.
Why don’t they hate us? Because they know and respect us, just as we know and respect them. As such the color of our skin becomes irrelevant and we simply become the guys they see every weekend who don’t treat them differently because they’re black. These are some of the most genuine people I have ever known and the color of their skin or their race disappears leaving us free to only worry about the real idiots.
That’s one stereotype broken, but what about religion?
People hate other people in ignorance, whether through race, color or religion. I would like to think I never fell into such bigoted behavior, but I am human and as such I may have done so without realizing it.
When surrounded by such overwhelming media attention after the attacks on September 11th, 2001 and the subsequent War on Terror, the world looked for some faceless enemy to hate. Osama Bin Laden wasn’t enough; it had to be a larger evil. With the enemies faced being predominantly Muslims, instantly the hatred level is going to go up, even on a sub-conscious level.
I watched the events of that day live, staring unbelievingly at the television screen as the images were beamed live around the world. The second plane crashing into the tower and its subsequent collapse will forever be burned into my mind, as I’m sure it will be for many others. I wanted someone to blame, someone to hate, someone to exact some form of revenge upon and when war was declared upon terrorism I rejoiced. Osama Bin Laden was revealed as the mastermind and Al Qaeda was his army.
But soon things changed, and Muslims somehow became the focus. While they did not become the enemy, they still emerged as the ones to be feared. Iraq was invaded in an attempt to stamp out the evil of terror and the public feared people who believed in something different to them and did different things to what they did. This religion which has been around for thousands of years suddenly seemed so much more dangerous, and I wondered how such a thing could come to pass that nothing had ever been explained to us sooner about the threat all around us. I was drawn in with everyone else and, though I would not say I hated Muslims in the slightest, I think I did begin to mistrust their actions due to my ignorance and can understand how that mistrust could have easily tipped over into full-blown hatred for those closer to the tragedy.
During research for a recent book, however, I had to do a lot of study about the religion of Islam in order to make the story more realistic. After countless hours of reading through explanatory texts as well as historical tomes including translated extracts from the Koran, I finally comprehended something about these people I had mistrusted and possibly blamed, and it certainly opened my eyes to a culture I had never before known apart from what the media had told me. What I discovered was a religion not so unrelated to my own, embracing many of the same core values I valued, and yet due to the extreme actions of a few assholes who claim they’re murdering in the name of God, this entire belief system is now smeared perhaps beyond repair.
Would such a thing be done to my religion if I lived in a predominantly Islamic state and Christian assholes murdered thousands of their people? Would I be seen as absolute scum for believing what I believe?
What I’m trying to say is it isn’t the religion that makes the person, any more than it’s the color of their skin; it’s their core values which truly comprises what people are. Assholes are assholes, regardless of their race, skin color or the religion they follow. So maybe we should simply focus all that negative energy on the assholes of the world and not those associated with them by coincidence, otherwise one day you might find yourself being the one who is hated instead.
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RAGE
Nasty thoughts permeate my mind from time to time; dark sensations coalescing into a closed
fist which yearns to be unleashed –
I dare not let it loose.
Time was I let the rage rule me; where the roller coaster of aggressive emotions pulled me along for the ride, engulfing me in the black cloud of its power which pushed away my fears and self-doubts and left me warm in its embrace. Blood didn’t matter, screams and cries were like music and grown men wept before my wrath, my otherwise persona washed away in a tsunami of fury more intoxicating than any drink or drug….
That life is gone now.
I hold it back with gritted teeth lest I slip back into its hold, befuddled and bemused but comforted by the cooing song of the siren, such is its power.
Some may ask why I would give up such strength, but in truth its power is hollow, the respect gained double-edged. For with every man who bows down in fear, ten more mutter behind hands which will one day also be raised in rage against me or those I love, and that isn’t an option.
So I smile where once I might have snarled, I offer an open hand where once it was closed and I turn my back where once I would have rushed in, because I know something they do not: my rage is not gone, it is merely controlled.
And now I am truly a man.
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