I Don't Buy It

trust...(photo courtesy: here)

My life is built on a pyramid of trust. Trust in everything from my parents, my friends, my teachers to the United States Military. Trust is a beautiful thing: sometimes it's standing out on a shaking limb while the wood splinters beneath your feet, sometimes it's the core of the light that brightens your world. Without it life would be impossible, you would be standing alone in a black abyss, unable to move forward or progress. On the other end of the spectrum, it's an excuse. It can be an unconscious one and a futile one, but an excuse nonetheless.


I'm sorry. I don't buy it.


Trust can be a cop out. It is an easy way to hand the baton onto somebody else, to shift the blame, to keep walking. It's a comfortable way to look at the devastation in Syria, the rising sea and CO2 levels, the great pacific garbage patch, the 31 million girls not in primary school, Donald Trump Rallies or the 795 million people who can't get enough food to lead a healthy life. We look at these things, shake our heads, maybe mutter a sorrowful "oh dear," and move on. And we move on because we trust that there's someone out there that won't. We turn away, because in a society built on the backs of other people, we have that confidence that someone out there is working and fighting for it. That someone, someone else, will fix it.


And with that confidence, we are burden free. Obama will pass a carbon tax, the UN will bring down ISIS, the US won't actually elect Trump as a president. But our thoughts stop there. We don't do anything about our own carbon emissions,  we don't stand up and fight for education in less developed countries, we continue to click on the article titles: 'Trump's Latest Outrageous Statement' and then say nothing when your relative falls to their knees at his side. We just move on.


I get it. We're all just figuring out our own lives. We've got problems, ups and downs. We've got school to attend, families to raise. We're just living. Well so are the people in Syria. So are the girls forced to quit school because they've been sold to their husband's family. So are the people who go hungry because the drought killed their crops. We're all just finding our own way through life. But those people who are born into a position to help, have an overwhelming obligation to lend a hand.


Not just Obama, Emma Watson, Naomi Klein, or Bernie Sanders. You. You, sitting behind one of many corporate desks on Wall Street. You, listening to the sound of a few too many potato chips crunch beneath your teeth as you flop down on a couch and flip on your TV. Me. Me, who can complain about having three hours of homework, and will never understand how it is to lay in bed at night and wonder if your home will be bombed tomorrow. All of us. We all need to be helping, doing, changing.


Individual motivation is at the roots of any collective solution. It's composed of it. So what matters to you? What are you going to do about it?


Trust me on this one,

Victoria