They just turn the volume down…
There’s a moment and you’ll know it when it lands, because it lands like a cinderblock dropped from a great height, where you stop being a bystander to the world and start being a witness to it. Different words but wildly different jobs.
Bystanders well, they just stand by and shrug.
A witness on the other hand can’t sleep.
Although, once you cross that line, something in you gets rewired. Call it radicalisation if you want, though that word’s been hijacked by people who think it means strapping on a vest or screaming into a megaphone until your throat bleeds. That’s not what I’m talking about at all.
It’s more the kind where you simply refuse to pretend anymore.
You start noticing things. And once you notice them, you can’t un-notice them. They’re like a song stuck in your head, except the song is “the world is run by people who’d sell your grandmother for shelf space.”
We are living in a weird nightmare right now. I won’t insult you by pretending otherwise.
The way out isn’t backward, and it isn’t through becoming the monster.
Maybe you get there by faith.
Maybe you get there by fate.
Maybe it’s both?
I don’t have the whole map.
But all I’m saying is don’t look away.
The world currently profits from your silence.
And so if you see any bullshit out there, you need to call it out.
You need to stand for something because like I’ve said in the past. If you don’t. You’ll fall for everything and we don’t want that.
Stephen Walker.