Every day, there’s enormous bloodshed,

Terrorists chopping off heads in the Middle East,

Thugs throwing acid in girls schools in Africa,

Drugs, kidnap, and murder in South America,

In India, a Hindu and a Muslim bash each other’s skulls in,

In Europe, an immigrant is murdered as his killers shout “Go Back Home”,

In America, a cop shoots a little black boy,

And every day there’s enormous bloodshed.

 

Every day there’s terrible misery,

A mother sees her son locked up,

A farmer commits suicide after a drought,

A veteran sleeps on the sidewalk,

Little kids scrounge through trash cans for food,

Husbands hear the flatline of their wives heartbeat,

And every day there’s terrible misery.

 

Is there no escape to this violence and sorrow?

For all our evolution,

Our democracy, our economy,

Our GDP and our freedom,

Why can’t we escape poverty?

Terrorism, hunger, disease, murder,

Is that what it means to be human?

 

We’ve become more isolated,

Locked up in prisons,

Trapped in cubicles,

Built walls around us,

Stranded on our own islands,

Fettered by our history,

Enslaved by our technology,

Is this living? Is this life?

Where empathy

Takes a backseat to the quest for money?

 

What keeps us going?

How do we keep on living?

What builds bridges from our islands?

What puts cracks in the walls between us?

What frees us from our shackles?

What keeps the human heart beating?

 

A smile from a stranger,

A hug from our fathers,

A pat on the back,

Faith, courage, companionship,

Human connection,

Hope.

 

Doctors jump off of planes in foreign lands

To cure diseases,

Friends pool their money and time to build a well

For a thirsty child,

A small boy stands up to a big bully

To protect a complete stranger,

A single mom skips lunch for a month

To buy a Christmas present for her daughter.

Random acts of human kindness bring us hope.

 

The challenges of our world are difficult to solve,

The scars of our past are not easily erased.

We’re mean-spirited, nasty, and brutish,

But we’re also loving, caring, and kind.

We have walls between us,

Oceans separate us,

Race, sexual orientation, religion--

There’s million reasons why we are divided,

But we need only one to be together,

The one thing we can’t live without:

Hope.