The Echo of Every Blow

The world shook again today.

As it did yesterday.

As it will tomorrow.

A headline out of Nepal.

A child’s body in an American classroom.

Drones skimming the edges of borders.

A public death that becomes a lightning rod.

And beneath it all—

something ancient rising.

But most won’t feel it.

Because they are busy

choosing sides.

The comment threads become battlegrounds.

Not about what happened,

but about who deserves to feel something about it.

I watch people cancel each other with pride.

I watch empathy become a contest prize

for those who match our worldview.

I watch humans

forget they are human.

And I understand.

We are trying to make sense of the senseless.

We are trying to feel safe in a world

that keeps proving how unsafe it is.

But love…

we cannot logic our way into safety.

And we cannot hate our way into healing.

What most don’t realize is this:

what we think we’re reacting to

is not the event itself.

It’s the entire inheritance of violence behind it.

The wars we’ve absorbed through bloodlines.

The betrayals our ancestors never named.

The displacements.

The lynchings.

The silencing.

The griefs turned to stone

in the basement of the psyche.

So when something happens—

it isn’t new.

It is a match to the memory.

And we react

as if our lives depend on it.

Because once, they did.

But this is where it gets dangerous:

When we use those memories to divide.

When we say,

“I can only mourn this death,

because of the last one that went unmourned.”

When we say,

“Your pain is less valid because someone like you hurt someone like me once.”

When we believe our own perception

is the whole truth—

rather than just

a view from a particular place on the mountain.

We are not just grieving,

we are keeping score.

And grief is not meant to be a ledger.

This is not a post about politics.

This is not a call to neutrality.

This is a prayer

for right remembrance.

That every act of violence

is not just about who did it—

but about the next 10,000 perceptions it shapes.

The next ten thousand children

who grow up watching us decide

who counts.

So ask yourself:

• Where have I drawn a line and made someone less?

• What pain am I protecting by denying theirs?

• Who taught me that compassion was finite?

And then breathe.

Breathe again.

Because the world is heavy, yes—

but it is not without hope.

We are here.

We are still here.

And there is still time

to choose a different way.

To stop rehearsing our pain

as punishment.

To start remembering each other

not as enemies,

but as echoes.