#34 A different kind of world
when we're riding all together/it's a different kind of world
My knees are aching, back is breaking
Thinking 'bout the state of the world
When we're riding all together
It's a different kind of world
The world is as you are.
I have always, always liked to think of the world as a beautiful place. I grew up learning a lot about all the ugly things that happened, but I also grew up learning about rocks, the way they were formed, the way they glistened in the light, about animals and forest trees, about the planets and the stars above me.
I always, always liked to think of the world as a hopeful place. I was very small when I noticed people were living on different sides of the street. Some of them were all about supporting those who ran things and some of them wanted nothing more than for things to change. I always, always liked to think of a world where everything was possible.
I was very young when I moved across the world and I saw that we were all imagining the same things and fearing (mostly) the same fears. I was twenty-four when I saw that we all imagine freedom differently, in 2020, when the walls all closed in. I always, always liked to think of the world as a beautiful place. I thought that we could all take care of each other, wouldn’t we take care of each other?
My Dad once asked me what I planned to do with my photography, I was fifteen. I told him I wanted to take photos of people and be featured on National Geographic. So you will live off flowers, he told me, you will eat flowers for dinner, a euphemism to say I would never make enough money. I always, always liked to think of the world as a beautiful place. There was so much to see and to learn from it. So much to share so we wouldn’t make the same mistakes.
And I grew, and I grew, and I grew, and then I saw we didn’t all think about the world in this way. Where there was once life, possibility, there was a barren landscape, more time running out, more death. In one part of the world, the coffee is getting cold while in another, buildings collapse and people keep drowning. Swimming, swimming to the shore of another life. On the brink of living again, they die.
I always, always liked to think of the world as a beautiful place. I used to pray when I was a small child before bed every night, asking my guardian angel to take care of me, to never leave me. I haven’t prayed in a very long time.
We are in the greatest show on Earth; being alive. The thing is, you think you have time. You think you will wake up every day with a million sunrises before you, a million good nights between now and when you’re not among the living. You think you have so many chances to make the world beautiful.
I have been scrolling and reading and grieving and wondering where we are supposed to go from here. The tragedies, the little griefs, the big griefs, all of them are lined up before me. I cry at the museum. I look at all the beautiful things we have made. All the beauty we are still capable of creating. All the beauty that is to come. I look out the window of the bus. I look at all the tall, tall trees, the ones that will be here long after I leave.
I have always believed the world to be a beautiful place.
And even when the world grabs me by the throat, shows me all of its devastating tragedy, gives me blow after blow after blow, I still forgive it.
I still do.
