Forever
Every human being recognizes that this is not the way things were meant to be. Children aren’t supposed to grow up and never know their biological parents. Husbands and wives were not meant to leave one another in the heat of acrimony, hurt, and selfish- ness. Boys and girls aren’t supposed to live in the daily fear of the mockery of peers. Pleasurable experiences and substances aren’t supposed to have the power to addict us. The world shouldn’t be scarred by violence and war. Your skin color shouldn’t be a reason for being rejected. Human beings were not meant to use other human beings for their own pleasure. Government was meant to protect people, not to use people to consolidate its own power. Human lives were not meant to be cut short by hunger, natural disaster, or disease. Innocent peoples’ futures were not meant to be destroyed by political and financial scams. A person’s capacity to hope was never intended to be kidnapped by false hope. Daughters were never meant to despise their mothers, or sons their fathers. Siblings were never meant to spend their developmental years in daily conflict with one another. The soil of earth was never designed to grow weeds better than it produces food and flowers. No person was meant to go to sleep with tears or wake up with anxiety or dread. In some way we all get it. At some level we all understand. No, we may not have stopped to meditate on it, and we may not be able to articulate the sense that we carry around, but we all know this is not the way things were meant to be. So we imagine, we dream, we hope and pray. We kick the chair in frustration, hang up the phone in anger, or silently cry in hurt. We have forever inside us, and it creates a natural disappointment with the brokenness of the here and now. Let me show you what I mean. Dreams of a Perfect World He looked out the window of his penthouse in Philadelphia onto the lush greenery of Rittenhouse Square, but he didn’t notice it;
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