Somewhere in the dark
As you lie awake at night and think about your life
There’s that nagging little whisper
That bit of conscience
The one that tells you:
YOU
Are part of The Problem.
You know what the Problem is. It surrounds you. You live and breathe it every day. It’s the weight on your shoulders, wearing you down. It’s the hamster wheel you run on, where no amount of effort ever seems to allow you to get ahead. It’s that constant dread in the pit of your stomach, that amorphous anxiety, that feeling you hate to give voice to because you worry others will call you “paranoid…” The feeling that everything around you has slowly been getting worse. Less safe. More unpredictable. Maybe even noticeably precarious. It's that sinking awareness that nobody seems to be on "your side" but you. It’s that stack of bills that never seems to decrease, no matter how much you pay or how long you pay for. It’s that credit card with the 24% interest that serves as your “emergency fund.” It’s those recurring physical aches and pains you’re praying will just go away, even though deep down inside, you know something’s wrong. It’s when you put off opening mail because every “official”-looking letter in your mailbox portends bad news. It’s how you hyper-analyze your bosses’ body language, looking for, but fearing to find, hints that he is dissatisfied with your performance. It’s all those times you go out of your way to keep your head down at work, even as the clock ticks into unpaid overtime, even as you’re mentally exhausted because all day and all night long, part of your brain is screaming at you that if something goes wrong, if you lose this job, there’s no backup plan, there’s no way to keep things going, and everything , EVERYTHING is JUST. GOING. TO. FALL. APART.
And the reason you know this, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is because YOU ALREADY WITNESSED it happen to other people. EVERY DAY. Maybe strangers, maybe friends and family.
And you’ve done nothing to stop it, because…
YOU are part of the problem.
YOU are calling people to harass them about their debts.
YOU are denying somebody’s health insurance claims.
YOU know where your bosses are breaking the rules, and YOU haven’t said a word about it to anyone.
YOU are using threats and under-reporting of hours to steal wages or overtime from your subordinates.
YOU are helping to pollute.
YOU are making or marketing unsafe, defective or poor-quality products or services.
YOU are talking people into purchasing something they can’t afford.
YOU are charging people unwarranted fees or interest.
YOU are giving angry customers the run-around and putting them on hold.
YOU are designing and/or building weapons.
YOU are taking your sweet time processing applications for aid that is needed immediately.
YOU are looking the other way.
YOU are blaming the victims.
YOU are teaching somebody a curriculum that you know is BS.
YOU are rejecting people for employment for all the wrong reasons.
YOU are doing the grunt work that enables somebody you know is a terrible person to go on doing terrible things to people.
YOU are buying up something you don’t need for cheap, marking it up, and selling it for more to somebody who does need it.
YOU are following orders you know are wrong.
YOU are injuring or even killing people you know are not a threat to you.
YOU are accepting a job that pays less than you know you need to survive.
YOU are the one who is desperately trying to tell yourself, “it’s all so I can pay my bills and take care of my own family.”
Because let’s be honest—we didn’t get into this mess alone. The world didn’t become as screwed up as it has become because we all loved our neighbors as ourselves and treated each other with kindness and care and dignity. The world is in this mess now because we all sold out. Not all at once, in some grand deal with the Devil where we stuck our signatures at the bottom of an infernal contract and exchanged our souls for a lump-sum of material rewards, but slowly, in bits and pieces over a long period of time. We all made tiny decisions each and every day, to do things we knew were shady, but we thought would give us an advantage, even when that advantage obviously came at the expense of somebody else. It’s time to confess it. We caused other people misery and pain. And we did it in the service of the Almighty Dollar.
What would the world be like if we ALL. JUST. STOPPED?
If we all just refused to do any more things that we knew were wrong, for the rest of our lives?
If we all suddenly walked off jobs, left workplaces, blew whistles, refused orders, went AWOL?
What would it take for us to all stop at once and say to ourselves:
“I AM NOT GOING TO BE ‘THAT GUY’ ANYMORE!
“I AM NOT GOING TO BE PART OF THE PROBLEM, I AM GOING TO BE PART OF THE SOLUTION!”
What would it take?
What would it take to create a worldwide “DON’T BE THAT GUY” campaign?
What would it take for YOU, personally, TODAY(!!!) to stand up against ONE THING you see in your everyday life that you know is wrong?
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before
MY eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good;
Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend
The fatherless, Plead for the widow.”
-Isaiah 1:16-17