I used to know the difference between right and wrong,

Between facts and myths,

Between wisdom and mindless chatter,

I used to believe that the world would forget me and leave me to a simple, happy existence

And my dreams, as humble or grand as they might have been,

Were attainable so long as I didn’t forget them,

I was told to care for the unfortunate,

To lend a hand to those who were born into suffering,

To treat all beings the way I would want to be treated,

For years, within my sheltered castle, these rules sufficed,

The divides held,

The world left me in peace,

My dreams were a hair away,

And my reputation for good was, humbly, unparalleled,

Don’t worry, this is not a coming-of-age story,

Or a tale of rising, falling, and being reborn,

This is a story of a world at war with its own existence,

A story of how right and wrong became a means of saying “Us and Them”,

How the myths of Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg became our truths when reality was much more bitter,

How Scoundrels became the voices of reason and congress became a word to describe politicians and monkeys,

How we willingly gave up our information to make life easier when all we wanted was to be forgotten,

How dreams were lost every time we looked at the interest rates on student loans,

How we came to see the concept of helping those suffering as a means of inviting suffering upon ourselves,

How the castles we lived in housed so much spite in them, it was a surprise they didn’t blow up decades ago,

And how I, and so many others, got lost in it all,

Like sailors cast away at sea,

A man once said, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”,

And his name was praised and memorialized forevermore while the world spiraled into oblivion indefinitely,

Today, we say, “Where do we go? To the Left, where nothing is right? Or the Right, where nothing is left?”,

And the world laughs and says, “Go forward, where nothing is left or right” and then forgets us…