What is my focus?

 

I read an article today and it made me stop and think. Because it asked a very pertinent question. What about you? What is your focus? What about your blog? What is its focus?

When I first started my blog, I was in essence trying to find my voice, hence the theme – Why we can’t keep silent. Why can’t we, why should not we remain silent?

I think it is because I have watched silences grow, out of fear, of what people, society will say, too helpless to speak up or against the forces of tyranny and abuse. I have watched till the silence itself becomes the standard, the thumb rule for anything and everything. 

And why is that?  Because for many,  it would just simply not be worth it, the pain, the cost, the sacrifice, to be, more often than not, the lone voice of dissent. 

That and the news report today, that 1400 children were abused in an English town over a period of 16 years, shocking tales of children doused with petrol, forced to watch and be subject to even more horrific acts – both ask me again – What is your focus?

This is - the sheer act of silence by those who knew about these shameful acts but chose to do nothing is a weighty accusation that damns not just them, but us all.

There is no easy solution to instances of abuse and what can be done to prevent it. Sometimes the sheer magnitude of the evilness of man shakes us to our core. But what we cannot, must never do, is be silent.

Rise up and speak. Stand and be counted. Fall if you must, but the plight of those who cannot speak for themselves must not be hidden. 

We are what we are but we are not savages. 
We are who we are but we are not animals.
We are, in truth and essence, meant to be kind and good, accepting and forgiving. If not, I fear we are all doomed to perish. Languishing in the afterlife, the darkest silence of all. 

How easy then, it is to condemn, how quick to condone, those that live with sullied pasts… we never ask the question – how the sullied pasts?


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