Bruised world

The World is a sad, broken place.  Where there are countries/organisations that consider freedom, democracy and joy a ‘sin’.  Where there are people who rule those countries/organisations with a rod of iron.  Where the concept of basic human rights are squashed flat and quite literally beaten out of those who seek it.  Where there is huge divide and constant conflict.

And where, in Western so-called ‘civilised’ countries, politicians court their counterparts in those other parts of the globe where terror reigns, because those places have all the oil and all the money; and that, it would seem, is more important than anything else.  Who publicly denounce the few who kill mercilessly, after selling them the very weapons with which they killed.

I am glad that my life is the way it is, that I have no children to try and explain to, that some humans want to hate.  Like to hate.  And want that hate to spread.  That those humans will kill innocent, defenseless people like you and me, like the children you are talking to, simply for enjoying their freedoms.  Enjoying life.  And unfortuately that conversation is inevitable, as we are all affected in our everyday lives, and children are perceptive and inquisitive.

I am most glad that I will not have the fact that I am leaving behind children, who didn’t ask to be brought into this world with an uncertain future, weighing heavily on my conscience as I take my last breath and leave them behind to face whatever else may come.  A desperately sad sentiment my own dad voiced this weekend, about us, his own three children after the Paris attacks on Friday 13th November 2015.

“later that night
I held an atlas in my lap
and ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.”

– Warsan Shire

I’m a positive person, I’ve written about my own joie de vivre before here in this blog.  I take joy from the simple things in life, like friends, family, books, travel, music, eating, drinking.  Just like those innocent people who lost their lives last week, in Paris, and Beirut and anywhere else there was unnecessary bloodshed.  Could I justify giving my children a blinkered, rose-tinted view of the world, or spoiling their innocent childhoods, by explaining the blunt reality?  Neither, I fear, would serve them well.

And that is my ‘reasons why  I don’t have kids #45