I live in a mad world, with mad people and mad ideas.
We go through our lives,
living in luxury,
greedy, selfish animals,
never giving a second thought to anyone but ourselves.

We have made an ignorant world,
full of those who wish only the best of life,
those who wish to forget that we have had a long and hard past,
and we recognize this as normal.

Why? Why do we strive to forget these things?
I know. It is because it hurts us, deeply, and profoundly,
and we have no defense against it,
Therefore we enable ourselves to be thoughtless, crude, and uncaring.
It is through our own defiance of memory,
that we make this awful perversion of a once-beautiful world.

Yet, is it not true that it is more painful to live it,
than to remember it? Is it not true that reading The Diary of Anne Frank,
and countless other somber, thoughtful books is a balm for our bleeding, wretched hearts,
when compared to the experience itself?
Is it not so that being in the World Trade Center during 9/11 is what can drive a man insane,
not the meaningless, dime-a-dozen pamphlets and documentaries we observe every year?

This is why I say, the world is mad.
Because in our selfishness, we choose to ignore these memories,
thus enabling another cruel, sadistic copy of Adolf Hitler, or Josef Stalin, or Ruhollah Khomeini
to once again shock us with their heartless acts.
We have become numb and unfeeling creatures, incapable of charity, it seems.

And I am afraid.
I am afraid because of this:
the fact that every single word I write is likely to have no impression on you,
or anyone else for the rest of their lives.
True, you may say “We can change! We’ll turn our lives around!”,
but I ask of you, and truly think of this,
will you remember this writing, this attempt to realign all our minds,
in a week? A month? Or perhaps, a year?
No, I say you cannot. You will not allow yourself to.
Because it hurts.

I will offer no apology for what I have written, nor will I heed your complaints.
I say all this simply because I care, and I wish to make a mark on the world,
no matter how minuscule.
I am not sorry if I have offended,
but in this instance, I will say:
People don’t want what they need, but say they need what they want.