Denial in Justice

A while ago I joked to a colleague about a funny mistake.

It was just a joke. I'm aware of my own mistakes. And yet, she reacted cold hardheartedly as if she herself does not make that mistake.

I look back at how she used to be and who she is now when I had first met her in this company. She is much colder, no longer willing to share her knowledge. She keeps to herself most times and hides her work. It's as if she wants in on a competition. Perhaps maybe she does, or she just wants to survive.

She laughs and smiles so rarely now. But every time she does, I don't feel it quite reaches anywhere. 

I think back to my own mother. I heard stories of how she used to be. A woman rallying on the streets fighting for democracy during the days of our country’s dictatorship and oppression. Marrying a man who had no penny to his name and suffered the ridicule of her entire family.

She too had gone cold over the years. And drove herself mad into the race of money and name.

We were driven too. A hit on the side for a mistake. Even a story book taken away from a deduction in a grade.

Separation of feelings. As if we are computers with hard drives and disks. They tell me we can do it. A lot of people say it's necessary.

But I wonder how that can be true when years later my own mother barely looks me in the eye and says,

 "I'm wrong. I shouldn't have done that to you."

But what is a sorry when its years too late?

How does a kid forgive when the child is already an adult?

I remember my mother preaching to my brother, reprimanding him about justice being delayed. It was about how he could not act sooner or decide faster for a very talented yet afflicted employee.

She says, 

"Justice delayed is justice denied."

I then think back to my colleague, and then to myself... to the generations then and now.

Do we end up driven, mad at the success of others whether their success is earned or even when it’s not? Are we driven to steal to from our own what we owe to ourselves and to the people we love?

What is strength then?

Does it mean being more than who we are?

If so, then does it also mean allowing ourselves to be carbon copies of the computers we were supposed to be in control of?

Or is it us? Years later, eyes barely meeting, head hung low saying sorry to our own children…saying sorry to ourselves.

"I'm sorry for the justice denied to you."

Author's Note

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