 Give me land that has not been conquered. Show me a place that does not contain a trail of pain. Take me to a place that has not seen torture and suffering, and I will see the benefits of our progressive societies. Let me live in a land that exists with freedom without having to steal the freedom of others.
Someone once told me that we live in a complex world and to find a simple life amongst it is to find beauty. In this I believe. I believe in the simplification of life. Perhaps my mind is too full of novels and romantic thoughts, but we have reached the society we live in now by way of greed and fear. Our ancestors came to this land because they were so overwrought in their own land that they looked to take a new home, a new beginning, but the home they found was not theirs to take. This land, deemed ‘unconquered,’ was already home to its own natives and economies. The Europeans called them ‘barbaric’ and ‘uncivilized’, but they were the ones doing the taking. Those who had called this land home for many lifetimes lived in harmony with the land instead of trampling over it and destroying what the land had to offer. They took the homes of people who understood, people who were not blinded by fear or greed. People who took what they needed and in return gave the land a promise to nurture the land and keep it safe, a promise to not take so much that the land was destroyed. ‘Civilized’ society swept through and not only murdered the lands inhabitants, but the land itself. If that is civilization, then I want no part. Somehow, greed and fear prevailed to such an extent that there is seemingly no remembrance of the cost paid for this society to flourish. We call ourselves a free country, yet we took the land’s freedom in order to get here. Even greater, we believe we are free when at every turn there is yet another power trying to imprison us through their surveillance and analyzation, all the while we sit here and watch them steal our freedom without a thought or acknowledgment. Alas, I write only of the past, and as the past no longer exists there is no word or opinion in the world to change what has been done. So the question remains, what is there to do next to make the best of this existence? Perhaps keeping my soul open will allow the answers to be known. Right now I find myself dissatisfied with what I see, and this troubles me deeply. Not knowing what to do about this dissatisfaction troubles me even more. This world is strange and I don’t comprehend or see my place in it. So where will my drive take me? Where is my soul taking me? What do I hope for? What do I trust? There is a sense of purpose and change welling up inside of me, but I don’t know where or how to apply it. I do know that I need to start with myself, because only with the self can one truly enact change. Even as I want to be seen in this society I see how it lacks in meaning and in purpose. The truth is that society has been spread thin. So thin that all allegiances to community waiver and come up short. If we cannot sense community, how will we connect to and sense the land? We are so detached from the land that we have fenced it in a place for us to go and indulge in our greed, to stroke our pride and lie to ourselves by saying we find pleasure in the land. But the paths we walk on have been laid before us in the forest; they have claimed the forest floor just as we voice our appreciation for and our preservation of land, which we do not allow to be its own. Even nature is not allowed to be natural. This I am also guilty of. As humans we cannot stop ourselves from conquering, because we do not see ourselves as the conquerors we truly are. To conquer: to overcome and take control of a place or peoples by force.
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