Slam about well, everything?

I wrote this because I have trouble sleeping at night and these thoughts rush through my head, so I thought I'd write them down...

Can a thousand different thoughts have a point?

The world is a fantastic place

Where we all live together, and yet some of us feel like we couldn’t be more apart

Such a small, confined place

Yet our population keeps growing, and we continue to alienate

It’s a beautifully clever place

And we’re wrong when we’re right, unequal when we’re equal

An intelligent place

When teachers are story tellers, and children are the future

This isn’t what I want to say, not in the very least.

I’m not trying to inspirational, I’m not an optimist

I’m a realist

Being a realist is knowing without a doubt, that the world will still be turning,

And that the things I say today will soon be part of tomorrow

Knowing that I’m sick and tired of my very close friends being persecuted

Because they love someone who looks a little too much like them.

Knowing that I can’t to a damn thing about it

Because I am a straight, white male

I do not know hardship, I do not know poverty

But I know people.

I am a story gatherer,

I’ve heard so many different stories that they all start to blend together.

You don’t have it bad, because somebody has it ten times worse

That is the single biggest crock of shit I have ever heard,

Not because it isn’t true, because who are you

To tell someone that what they’re experiencing isn’t difficult.

That it isn’t hard, that they’ll just get over it.

The world needs more realists

And you’ll look at me saying,

Shouldn’t we be optimists?

NO

Optimists are blind to reality

It’s not called “Optality”

Because if it were I’d shit daisies, but I don’t.

Hence I am a realist.

We’re so afraid of the most destructive thing that can be hatched.

This thing that’s called an idea.

Because once you have an idea, it festers

Spawning other ideas, and eventually you share those ideas

And other people have ideas, and then that idea becomes a belief

And that belief becomes a dream

And that dream becomes a movement

And then nothing seems so impossible after all.

After all, this is something our children, and our childrens’ children

Will someday read about in their textbooks.

Do we want them reading that we were, “blindly optimistic”?

No, of course we don’t, that’s the trouble with people

We think problems will just melt away when they won’t.

Is this what we want people to think of us?

That we just sat and watched to world go by,

As millions of children die every god-damned day because they don’t have access to fresh water?

As species are dying off because we don’t want to sink money into clean energy because

“Hey, it’s not hurting us RIGHT NOW”

This is the world we are giving to our children

The world needs more smiles yes, but is that the cure?

Maybe, because a smile releases chemicals in the brain to make you feel “happy”

Fuck chemicals in your brain, happiness can’t be defined

If you can honestly tell me that you can define the emotions of every single human being

By the chemicals that they’re brain produce

Then maybe your brain isn’t producing the right chemicals,

Because once everything can be explained, there’s no more room to wonder

To wonder about why people love, or why people hate

Or why people barely understand fractions while other people can derive complex derivatives.

Leaders aren’t born, they’re bread

The best leaders in the world weren’t born to lead

They assumed the role when no one else would

Because everyone else was too afraid

Because everyone else would rather suffer in silence

Than rejoice in sweet freedom

Freedom isn’t free

Because men and women have died since the dawn of mankind

And gotten absolutely nowhere

It’s the 21^st century, and yet we still get so bogged down by close-mindedness

That we forget to love thy neighbor.

So I have to say this

At long last we arrive at my point skewed but loosely tied to everything I just said

Have an opinion,

Because if there is a God, he didn’t give me free will

To not question everything I’ve ever heard

Because if you believe that a snake told a woman born from dirt and a bro’s rib

To eat an apple to obtain endless knowledge of the universe,

Than you have absolutely no say in telling me what is “unnatural”

My friends are gay

No, not my gay friends, because being gay does not define who they are as a person

It is simply a word used to call them different

Because what’s wrong with different, if you think about it?

Oh wait, we forgot how to think, that’s why we face the people

Like Westboro Baptist, thinking (or lack thereof) that our words will somehow affect them

When all they’re really looking for is some attention,

Because I believe that they’re about as religious as your average peanut.

But hey, that’s just my opinion

And what a glorious thing it is to live in a beautiful country

That allows me to say whatever the hell I want as long as it doesn’t put anybody’s wellbeing in jeopardy

Because you really have to read the fine print with this sort of thing

Because if you read the elastic clause, which I won’t get into right now

You’ll see that fine print controls everything.

See, I can cover

Inspiration

A broken educational system

LGBTQ rights

Politics

Main-stream religion

And my point still won’t be made

Because maybe I don’t have one because I’m a realist

But what is realism but some wishy-washy excuse for being a debby-downer?

Because I’ve done my fair share of drugs

I drank, I smoked, and I fucked

And maybe that’s why I have such strong opinions about things

Because I can relate

And my opinions change a million times a day

Because if they don’t there’s something wrong

Because every day is a new day

A new chance to make a difference, to make someone else’s day

To let them know, “Hey, I’ve been there.”

“Hey, you’re not alone.”

Because what is money but a tool to pick others up

Because when you go and by your

Venti half-caf double syrup cappafrappeccino

That you’re helping to pay your barista’s wages, helping them to go and buy other things

Supporting a vast economic system that we can’t begin to understand

It’s frustrating to know that

People have never bought the person behind them’s cup of coffee

Simply because they’d never get anything in return

What happened to pay if forward?

This is a bit drastic, but you could save a life

By just asking how somebody is doing.

You could turn someone around, just by buying them lunch.

Because what is that five dollar bill doing in your pocket

That’s so fucking important that it cannot be in somebody else’s?

Because I don’t have a lot of money, but I sure as hell have a lot more

Than a lot of other people

Because it’s frustrating

It’s frustrating to know that when I write down the thoughts that keep me up every single night

That none of them make sense on paper yet flow seamlessly when inside my head.

It’s frustrating that nobody ever thinks of any of this while I think it every night.

It’s frustrating to know that I alone can’t make a difference, because I have an idea

That we’re all unique, just like everybody else

So why can’t we respect our differences and live together

And get over what we were taught in the past

Because innovation is driven by people shattering boundaries and breaking the rules

So why don’t we just change how we do things,

Treat other how we want to be treated, no that’s silly.

Treat others how they want to be treated,

Because if I treat you how I want to be treated I’m pretending that you and I

Are exactly the same when we’re not

So do unto others what you would have them do unto you,

Why is all of this so complicated?

Because we’re realists, not optimists, that’s why.