That thing with feathers

"We are not afraid of night,

Nor days of gloom,

Nor darkness–

Being walkers with the sun and morning."

From 'Walkers with the dawn' by Langston Hughes

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I think about the world a lot these days. I mean, what the hell? The news has become a long litany of place names: Orlando, Baghdad, Dallas, Istanbul, Nice. The list is endless.

I'm sure I could post the same poem week after week, over and over. For we seem to live in the exact times Yeats described in his 'The Second Coming': 'things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.'

But I don't want to. I want to cling to hope, even if it seems elusive or downright illusionary.

I wonder what I can do to change the world or even a tiny bit of it. I wonder if the world even wants to be changed for the tiniest bit. And I know the only thing I can do, is to start right here with myself and try to create a small pond of peace and calm in an otherwise wild and raging see. Be a walker with the dawn, if I can.

And if you look, there are things to be found. In my hometown, there's a project called Dare To Be Grey. They try to break away from polarization, from the eternal yes - no of people who see the world only in black and white. Elsewhere in the Netherlands, a group of people called ieder1 ("every1") wants to organize a big parade to celebrate all our many differences.

I see people complaining on Facebook that muslims never take a stand against terrorism and yet I've seen several Facebook-groups of muslims doing exactly that.

I guess hope, like everything else, is in the eye of the beholder. I chose to look for the light. Not Yeats's slouching beast but Hughes' simple dawn.