Heroes and Fools...Let's We be It

I started watching the news again
  after a 4-year hiatus.

I once had a bumper sticker that read,

  ‘If you’re not outraged, you aren’t paying attention.’

Only, I had paid so much attention
  that each day, I wept
  and struggled under a growing sense of
  ineptness, inability, and smallness
  in the face of so many seemingly intractable problems.

So, I retreated to a place of quiet,
  shutting out the world, and
  listening only to the quiet voices
  inside me.

In my cocoon of self-imposed abstinence from humankind’s vagaries,
  I found solace and peace, quiet and insight,
  images that seemed to verge on wisdom.

In that space, I learned to trust myself,
  the spirits that guide and watch over me,
  and the currents that flow through our lives.

Yet, what is real wisdom if not epiphanies
  rising from the ashes of failure,
  born of sorrow and
  forged in destitution?

No, I could lay no claim to wisdom
  if all I could do was to
  pronounce judgment from the safety of my cocoon.

We have botched it up, my friends.
  We were given a precious gift
  and we slandered and desecrated it.

But, even from the depths of my darkest despair,
  there calls forth a vision, a belief,
  that it is not over.

It is not over.

While we breath,
  and with every breath we take,
  there is another opportunity
  to shed the straightjacket of complacency,
  to allow our blood to fill with outrage,
  and to decide just what we can do
  to make change.

Each day,
  with every breath,
  each one of us.

And, in our valiant efforts to
  right the wrongs
  and breath life into this earth and our fellow beings,
  we will earn the wisdom forged
  of real, hands-dirty, blackened-eye living.

Let’s we be the heroes and the fools.