Is it worth it? To listen to the news? To keep up with politics? I started my week off, after last weeks latest terrorist attacks, focusing on the “positive” in my life. Focusing on all the goodness in the world. Pondering prayer and love, the idea of a coming together of the sane people of the world to try to make it a better place for everyone. I thought about how much “change” has already happened, how society has evolved in many ways. Then I thought about how that reality is only for the privileged, the educated, for so many in the world conditions are just as oppresive and backwards as they’ve always been. 

It’s only Tuesday, my optimism didn’t last long. Yesterday I found myself “shutting down”  as I listened to one too many reports on ISIS. I read one too many articles on how  the   Western world has “fueled” the fire. I couldn’t help but think we’ve reached the tipping point.  The oppressors are being replaced by a new breed of oppressors. 

I don’t know if I can do it anymore. I want to stick my head in the sand. I want to live in “lala land” But I can’t. I feel unsettled. I feel the thumps of the war drums, the marching, the aircraft bombings happening now, far away from here but feeling like a tick digging into a place on my back I can’t reach. 

The war will never end. Love can’t conquer all. What should we do? How can we go on with our lives while innocent people are casualties of a war between too ideals that will never come to a compromise. Never.

I don’t know. It’s hard to even deal.