tolerance

Aliens (short story)

Prose

One day, Amelia woke up in the company of aliens from another planet.

She had no memories of her life before she started living with aliens.

Their language sounded like English aurally, but they couldn’t communicate since they were creatures from different worlds.

Even though they lived in the same spaceship, they lived in a completely different state of existence than Amelia.

They were all the same kind of alien. Amelia was the only human on the spaceship.

Did they perhaps think she was one of them?

She decided to blend in.

She learned to eat alien food.

She played with alien toys.

But secretly, she longed to be rescued by her own kind. She often gazed outside of her bedroom porthole, hoping for a glimpse of Earth. But she didn’t even know what she would do if she saw it.

Convince her alien captors to return her to her planet?

What if she blows her cover and they turn violent?

Should she chance it?

She knew she couldn’t stay, but even after living among the aliens, she couldn’t trust them. She decided to escape on her own.

She made her preparations, and when the chance presented itself, she took it.

She slipped away when the aliens were sleeping, and tucked herself and her bag comfortably into an escape hatch. She powered it up, took aim, and ZOOMED toward freedom!

At first, there was nothing but inky blackness. The vacuum of space was lonely, oppressive, and dangerous. It was a different feeling from when she lived with the aliens.

She pushed aside her feelings of fear, and kept her eyes moving back and forth, searching the darkness. Finally, she saw it!

A glittering blue ball with swirling milky clouds. Her home planet.

When she landed, she was embraced by members of her own kind. Fellow humans. Amelia wept with gratitude. She wasn’t sure this day would ever come.

It took some adjusting, but with the love, care, and patience of other earthlings, Amelia learned to live as a human again.

Sometimes she thought about the aliens, but she never wanted to live with them again.

Amelia lived out the rest of her days as a human on Earth with peace in her heart. Her memory lives on in those she impacted along the way.

Harmony (poem)

Poetry

Potemkin cityscapes,
Garish in ostentation.
Standardize banalities,
Expression nonexistent.

Flow of society,
Chosen direction.
Currents pull under,
Restless agitation.

Nails get hammered,
Flat against the board.
Smoothed with polish,
Glued to their holes.

Oxygen dwindling,
Gasping for difference.
Experiments cause explosions,
Laboratories mean danger.

Pluralities wreak havoc,
New ways of seeing.
Conflicting minds wander,
Lost in the churn.

Messiah (short story)

Prose

Gather around children, and let me teach you how to hate.

Former prophets have led lessons on how to love, to have compassion, to be magnanimous and altruistic. These are, indeed, integral aspects of a human’s emotional needs during its life. They are part of the structure of our emotional nature.

But so too, is our human propensity for anger and hatred. Misdirected, these emotions can result in catastrophe. Yet ignored, these emotions don’t cease to exist, and it would be folly to expect them to. They continue to generate in response to the natural world we occupy. How, then, is the right and proper way to conceptualize the appropriate position for anger and hate in our wide-ranging emotional lexicon?

Love is for connection. Anger is for protection. And permanent threats to safety receive hatred. They are meant to be eliminated. There are things in this world you want to get close to, and other things that need to stay far away. Allow these emotions to guide you.

But unresolved trauma can distort your emotional reactions to situations. You must always maintain a reasonable mind. Never stop trying to make sense out of chaos. Sometimes this effort requires great stillness for your cognitive faculties to operate effectively.

Learn to discern the truth with your empathy. Understand the world as it is, first, without imposing how you wish it to be, yet. Eliminate your attachment to your self when you regard the world, to avoid distorting it with your own subjectivity. Project your mind into the minds of others; experience life as if you were them. Their truth feels as valid to them as yours does to you. You can learn their blind spots, and in the process, your own as well.

Ideologies are easier to hate than people, because usually, people are perpetually changing. But also, you can hate someone until they change. Don’t let them into your life until then. Pay attention to personality and morality, which is the wiring that controls the way a human relates and behaves.

Humans have a need for consistency. Stability and security is a human need. Don’t rely on other humans to provide that to you. That would be folly, because it is against their nature. Seek it in small, sustainable ways. This is your foundation to stand on.

Cast your eyes broadly to the causes of human suffering in this world. There are many valid things to hate, you need only choose. They are vast and wide. So many attacks, resulting in so many wounds. If you don’t heal your wounds, they multiply, like a virus. Either the disease will take over your body or it will spread to others. You must not allow this to happen. Because harm compounds.

Heal others, heal yourself. These simultaneous duties inform each other. When you pursue them both mindfully, the resultant synergy expedites your progress in each endeavor. Your power will grow, your impact will hit heavier. And the tilt of this planet’s axis will shift closer to that elusive concept of justice.