Everything Can Change

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I sat here listening to phone calls made by people who were in the twin towers as they were falling. The anguish, the fast but convicted ‘I love you’s, the screams. I cried. It always shakes me.

I spent the whole day with a lump in my throat because today always hangs heavy. As time unfolds, we see things clearer. Veils lift; fog dissipates.

I don’t know if things were always this obvious, or maybe it is the availability of information that makes it so obvious— one can just look around and see the blatant corruption in government, our justice system, all systems.

Everything is crumbling. We see how much is so distorted, and nothing is what it seems. And then, there is a pang in the chest for the innocent people who lose their lives because of others’ willful ignorance, negligence, avarice, and sometimes— just plain malice.

I think about the last three years and how things have unfolded, and how many people have paid with their health, their livelihoods, their lives. And no one cares. There is no reckoning. We dig our holes deeper. The total disregard of human lives— it is heart-shattering. People hang on to pride, falsities and ideologies. The human race bows to anything for a sliver of validation that disappears the moment it arrives. It seeks to belong to the group that will turn on you and destroy you in a second. The more one studies even simple things like food, toxins and regulations, one sees that no one cares. You can trust nothing.

We often frame terrorism as an outside force coming to disrupt, and it often is. But in my lifetime, I can say we have seen terror sown from within. Harm brought from within.

My mind then pivots to the valiant ones who run with the right heart to be a helping hand and be love in action. The ones who run into chaos to pull others to safety or at least try. The ones who die trying. It is a rare heart who does that (and getting rarer).

Today reminds us to love and make it known and to remember that everything can change in an instant. Everything can change. And while so many approach the game of life in such different ways, we each get to choose who we will wake up and be. Hopefully, we will be the one who cares. Hopefully, we will be the rare one.