Who Am I To Be

Who am I to be me? Who am I to be both blessed and cursed with existence? Sentenced to a life of ever present awareness that with each and every beat of my heart there exists one less moment in which I can continue living, yet with the distinct knowledge that with each passing second of each seemingly meaningless moment I become so much more than only myself, but rather a growing part in a grander, more magnificent conglomerate of people forming the basic semblances of a cohesive community destined to shirk the rags it now wears for an eventual white robe.

 

Who am I to be the voice of me? Condemned to the terrors of each breath, the aching of my lungs expanding with each word uttered, forged by my mind just a moment before, only to feel the distinct pleasure of the sheer possibility that the words expelled from my heart via my lips might infect and inspire one person or one generation to an action or inaction dependent upon how well the words were parsed and syntactically spoken.

 

Who am I to be the sight I see? Doomed to sit by while those with more vocal prowess and affluence than me poison the world in which I observe - tainting truth and trading it for lies, stealing hope in exchange for popularized fear, and distributing hateful sermons and pleas to both sinner and secular in place of encouraging love �" yet blessed with the foresight to know that when I become who I dare to be there will be another watching me.

 

I am because I am, and I will be who I am needed to be. Not blinded by irrational fears of some shaded figure I have been informed to be insurmountable and unassailable, but one which can be systematically torn down from the gold plated head to the clay feet if I only find the words to convey the truth they so desperately desire to hide. Words have the power to create and destroy. For too long have we demonized their power to destroy, shouting cries that if we have nothing nice to say then we should be silent when in actuality we should have been screaming obscenities at the height of our voices at the injustices in any attempt, perceived as vain or otherwise, to tear down those who pollute who we dare to be and impede who we will be.

 

Who am I to be me? Who are you to be you? Who are we to be us? The answer is simple. I am who I am and you are who you are because in some farcical, cosmic error �" divine or evolutionary �" we became.  It is not “who are we to be”, but “who are we to be any less”…