My truth

I was moved into writing this after watching the film ’12 years a slave’, a beautiful rendition of the life of Solomon Northup, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 1840s by two strangers whom he had just met. At the time, he belonged to a class of American society which was being frowned upon by the rest of the American populace, who were, for the most part, consumed with upholding the culture of white supremacy. Solomon Northup was a free black man, a family man who was impeccable in his mannerisms and his sense of duty and responsibility toward his wife and children, and as history has proven time and time again, men of such rare breed are often tested to the extremes of their ability to tolerate pain and injustice, before fate finally frees them from their shackles of suffering and allows them some measure of respite, a brief sojourn which would allow them to return to the arms of loving wife and child, before they are compelled to revisit their previous life of misery, in an effort to save those who were less fortunate than them. Such was the life of Solomon Northup, who sets an example for us all in this new era, where slavery is merely a concept, a thing of the past. We are each responsible, not only for our own lives, but for the lives of those around us. A man or woman who can turn his or her back to this simple, universal truth is simply not worth living.

One can argue that the instinct for self-preservation, above all, is what has led to the continued survival of the human race. But I believe that the bonds of friendship, of brotherhood and love, and respect for the lives of those around us, especially for the lives of those less able than us, is the primary cause for our continued survival today. All around us in our day to day lives of mundane routines and never ending complacency, we witness the pain of others, the despair etched on tired faces, the hatred, the fear, and most alarmingly, the expressionless apathy of those who have been driven to the brink and beyond. Each and every one of us have a different way of dealing with the obstacles thrown our way, and attuning ourselves to the needs of others, cultivating an ability to feel another’s pain as our own, is something we must all strive to achieve. This ability to empathize, which is expressed by us to variable degrees, is the key, not to our survival, but to our continued existence as decent, sensitive human beings who would actually try to save a life in danger instead of capturing the scene on camera, or not pass by a dying prostitute in the streets for the fear of retribution from society. Mere survival is not enough. We must be worthy of the lives with which we have been blessed. That is a debt that all men and women, in freedom or slavery, can spend a lifetime trying to repay.