You were born with a little lump of coal inside your chest, so was I. So was everyone. You know, metaphorically? But it doesn’t stay that way. What life does to you and what you’ve chosen to do with your life both change the little lump along the way. You started out with a little lump of coal inside your chest, but you’re not going to end your life that way. Depending on what you do with it, depending on what happens to you, it changes, it shrinks and grows. We have less control over life than we are sold by big business, most of all this is random luck with no amount of bootstrap pulls changing much at all. That greedy selfishness we’re sold as a survival mechanism is not for our benefit, after all, it’s to make us tear each other down, so the big luckies can get even luckier.
The only thing we get to control is how we react to all this madness happening to us, if we react with cruelty or fear, empathy or love, that’s about it. Everything else is dumb luck. Don’t let the bastards tell you any different. The only thing we really control is how we react to all this crazy.
But that’s something important, even if it’s just one small thing. Even if it’s the one thing we’ve any real power over at all. By hook or by crook, the lump of coal will evolve with the paths you choose to take in your life. Every time you give in to fear or hate or anger, every time you allow yourself to ignore the needs of others for the sake of your wants. Every time you put your sense of identity over shared humanity, some of that coal burns away. Vomits out the flame of bigotry.
It disappears piece-by-piece-by-piece-by-piece.
Whereas every time you help people no matter who they are, no matter what false binaries may tell you they’re not the same as you, every time you have the courage to hold back the rage and judgement so you can just help those who need it, your heart gets a little bit stronger. And each time your heart gets a little stronger, it puts a little more pressure on the coal inside you. If you understand the nature of coal, even metaphorical coal, you’ll know what happens with enough pressure and time. That strength over the ages can turn the coal into dense sparkling diamonds.
You were born with a little lump of coal inside your chest, so was I. So was everyone else. One of the few things we have any control over in our lives is what happens to that coal inside of us.
Will you spend a life frittering it away, belching out the smoke of self-righteousness and the fire of hate? Or will you grow your heart so powerful in empathy you leave behind a precious gem?
Maybe the only real choice you’ll get to make.
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