Watch the World Burn!

Lately, I’ve found myself carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. The news cycle feels relentless. There’s chaos, uncertainty, and sometimes, it feels like the ground beneath us is shifting. It feels like we are losing hope for a better world.

What world are we leaving for our children to exist in? And I say exist because who can truly live and thrive in a world that forces us to be quiet? A world where laughter is, most times, an act. Where happiness is a social media post. Where inauthenticity is rewarded, and authenticity is only applauded when it fits the narrative of the masses.

A world where beauty is most times only on the surface, but when you look deeper, you find monsters lurking. A world where men and women hate each other. A world where most men are weak, and most women are no longer virtuous… and yet both are accepted and applauded for it. A world where nobody is safe, and material things have become more valuable than the breath of life itself.

We live in a world where a person’s word is no longer their bond. There is no integrity left. Where the things we don’t need to thrive are free, and the resources we do need to survive are unattainable to the masses. We are afraid to stand up for what is right because we fear criticism... we beg for validation, so we suffer in silence. We accept the bare minimum from our fellow humans. We don’t challenge each other to do better. We don’t hold them accountable… maybe because we don’t practice holding ourselves accountable.

The air is thick with both hate and fear, and yet we wake up and take a deep breath daily. We feed on the darkness, then ask why it poisons us- We have become numb to the things that should enrage us. We have become docile… compliant, weak.

We glorify cruelty. We praise weakness, and we judge the purest of souls harshly.

Life means nothing to us. The loss of one child- or a thousand children- doesn’t matter to us. We use and abuse the good ones left, and when they choose to set boundaries with us, we call them selfish… we hate them. We have lost all empathy, decency, and as a race… I mean the human race. We have evolved backwards. We are savages dressed in silk- adorned monsters. And what’s heartbreaking is… we raise our children to be the same.

We have created curated communities with fancy names for the most depraved among us… and called them memberships. We have lost our voices. We have lost our strength. We have lost our way. And the blind, the deaf, and the dumb lead the generations after them into the pit of “wokeness.”

Here in Trinidad, while things have been on a steady decline for GENERATIONS—yes, I said generations, because we did not get here in a fortnight- we worry about the latest trends, the next party, “rum till I die,” “whine down low” culture… while the cost of living rises steadily, owning a home in your lifetime is mostly unattainable, and politicians lie, steal, bleed our sweet island of its wealth and vitality… and vanish- and we allow them to... Without holding them accountable.

We get on social media and laugh, make jokes about the state we are in. We spew hate and racial slurs at each other, talk down to one another, and try to tear down those who share positivity and growth. Our hatred of others is only a reflection of the hatred we carry for ourselves. But do we know that our children, our nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren- must live here too? Do we know that when we fail to fight for ourselves, we, by default, fail to fight for them?

So yes… I am uneasy. I am heartbroken… because I have children. And I do my best to teach them the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. I teach them to have empathy, but I also teach them to have boundaries. I teach them to speak up for themselves… and for others.

But by the time the world is finished burning… where will they go?

And yet… even in this chaos, I cannot stop thinking about what we could do differently. What if we refused to participate in the numbness? What if we chose to speak truth, even when it’s uncomfortable? What if we held ourselves accountable before expecting or demanding it from anyone else?- After all, accountability does begin within.

Because the world may be the darkest it has ever been, but every act of honesty, courage, and empathy is a spark. A spark we can pass on to our children. A spark that reminds them that life is meant to be more than mere existence.

We can’t heal the entire world, unfortunately. But maybe we were never meant to. Maybe we’re just asked to tend our little piece of it. And if each of us tends our piece with love- imagine the garden we could grow.

We cannot save everyone. We cannot fix every wrong. But we can teach our children to see, to feel, to resist, to rise. And maybe, just maybe, that is how a new world begins- quietly, imperfectly, in the hearts of those who refuse to let the fire consume everything.

Our children are the only hope we have left.

Love, Samantha❣️