Maybe

Maybe we shouldn’t have moved to the suburbs, destroying our health, our wealth, our planet.

Maybe we shouldn’t have gotten financially rich — though certainly not wealthy — doing work for corporations with which we didn’t agree, in environments that crushed our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual lives while eating terrible food and pretending (and believing) the things we were doing were helpful to anyone or anything when we knew the opposite to be true.

Maybe we know how bad we’ve treated those we openly claim to hate, fear the same treatment from others if the roles are reversed and can’t envision that if the roles actually are reversed, that someone could be bigger than us and treat us better for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.

Maybe the inertia of the system we built will continue to overstate our size and influence and sustain us for longer than our society and planet can afford, even as we claim to have no voice in media or representation in government.

Maybe worrying about the value of sending $2,000 to families making $200,000 and instead doing nothing is exactly the reason so few trust anybody to do anything right, ever.

Maybe we shouldn’t have decided that there are “two sides to every story” and that the two sides means one set of facts and one opposite set of facts instead of how to understand the nuance of two different interpretations of the same set of facts.

Maybe once you are so far gone, beaten down by so many decisions that were sold to you as the right one to make only to learn that you had been misled by supposed friends who were just out to make a profit, that you prefer to simply be entertained in a decadent fashion because you have nothing left to lose and you’d just like to accelerate the suffering of your friends, neighbors and country.