WHY DO WE **** OUR
BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
AND OUR HOME?
I’m sure you remember seeing the
photgraph of Earth taken from the
Moon. Did you not have an epiphany
at that moment? Did you see any
black lines separating one region of
Earth from another? Of course you
didn’t, because political boundaries
are illusory. What you saw was one
beautiful planet with a number of
billion human beings attempting to
co-exist on it. You saw one sky that
covered all of Earth and one ocean
that covered most of it. You saw huge
chunks of Earth, which we call conti-
nents. If you had been on the Moon
with a powerful telescope, you would
have seen big cities where millions
of human beings lived often in many
different ways: different cultures,
different religions, different languages,
different skin colors, different
shaped physical features. But
all would have been breathing the
same air, drinking essentially the same
water that comes from the same
atmosphere, all sharing the same
home, the only home that billions
of human beings have, or will be
able to have, for a terribly long
time. If you were able to go far
enough back in time, genealogically
you would understand that all of us
are related, that all of us are, if
you will, distant brothers and
sisters. We human beings are
one big family. So I must ask, why
do will **** our brothers and sisters?
Why? Instead, why don’t we have
a continuous, worldwide family
reunion during which we could
get to know each other, give each
other a hug, perhaps find someone
we love and marry that human be-
ing? Think of all that the billions
of us could share with one another:
the music, the dancing, the food,
for example. Together we could
plan for world peace. We could
join hands and hearts and find
ways to save our home from
annihilation from catastrophic
climate change and nuclear
holocaust. We could laugh together.
We could pray together; after all,
we all pray to the same God; it’s just
that we call God by different names.
Our home, Earth, is but one of an
infinite number of planets in the infinite
Cosmos. But it is the only one we now
have. Why **** when we could live our
lives in perpetual love?
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and human-rights advocate his entire adult life. He recently finished his novel, A CHILD FOR AMARANTH.
