Thunder And Lightening

I do not like thunder. I think it is proof that the Gods that be do not like what is happening to the world they so generously bestowed upon us. I do not like how claustrophobic, grey and moody the house becomes before the very first clap. How my entire head tenses in anticipation. I do not like the shock of rainy tears that falls afterwards. I do not like the way thunder makes it even more impossible for me to hear now that my ears will not work: fluid swooshing around them all the time as if I am living underwater.

When I cannot hear the world doesn’t feel safe to me. When beautiful people are shot in penance for their mere existence, while simply out to enjoy themselves in a nightclub, the world doesn’t feel safe to me. And when a woman, a local MP, doing important work for all our sake’s, even if we do not necessarily take her side in the argument, is shot dead, stealing her away from her children and leaving politics a wretched, wicked shambles – the world doesn’t feel safe to me.

But then the world has become an unthinkable place hasn’t it? I can barely fathom it anymore. There is too much evidence of the mass destruction of both empathy and kindness. Too many heads warped by hatred. And religion. A propensity for violence in the name of sport. Too many guns. Too many young men with no respect for humanity. Too many old men with no respect for children. Yes. The world has become an unthinkable place.

We exist in the most selfish of society now. A society in which vacuous young people strangle each other with leather belts in sexual games played out on reality TV. A society in which selfish Mothers spend countless hours sharing memes that declare their apparent, all-consuming, relentless love of their children on Facebook (Look at me! I love my children more than you love yours!) and then fail them in ways that emotionally cripple those very same children for always. A society in which we value football over literacy and insist upon our right to arm ourselves against an imagined apocalypse without any consideration for the damage those weapons will do long before the apocalypse has arrived.

We have forgotten how to love. We have forgotten how to worship. How to protect the most vulnerable in our society from allowing the fear we all feel to disturb their desperate minds with sickening consequences. We have forgotten that media isn’t truth. That our children need freedom, not the cotton wool we have no choice but to wrap them up in if only to protect them from heads turned evil. We have forgotten to police the incubators of hate for too many angry young men and forgotten to make those same young men matter so that this kind of hate cannot take root in their bitter stomachs.

It is raining heavily now. A dancing storm  of outraged protest. All our windows have been thrown open and Finley keeps sticking his head out and letting the rain drip all over his face.

He is still young. Cannot get enough of the rain.

But I have had enough. I want it to stop. I want it all to stop. I want the world to be a safe place. For me. For you. For us and for our children and though my heart is always hopeful I cannot begin to understand how we can begin to drain the poison infiltrating so many sectors of our society.

My heart is always hopeful. But my head hurts.