Abby

Oh come now, don’t make me laugh.

Change? Please.

What is change?

Useless. Impossible.

Something Michael Jackson sang about and everyone forgot?

Basically.

You can’t change the world.

It’s you versus millions,

Unconquerable.

Some nights you think you can eliminate world hunger.

Cure AIDS. Stop sex trafficking.

If only –

If only what?

You were older, richer, smarter, bigger…

You’d take down life’s bullies, wouldn’t you?

Wouldn’t you?

Can’t you hear yourself?

I can, and I hear myself laughing too because I know.

This is why we can’t change anything.

I’m not out to change the world.

It can’t be made perfect.

You know, I can’t even start with the man in the mirror.

But neither can you, because you only see perfection.

Or imperfection.

How can you fix the wounds of the world if you can’t recognize your own?

By talking about it?

Pouring your “broken” heart out onto a page,

Renouncing the world’s evils as though somehow you’re not involved?

Words can’t change the world. There, I said it.

I wish people would stop writing about it.

And listening to it.

I don’t care what the posters say.

They’re not even motivational, and you know it.

The same words spoon-fed to you get pretty bland, don’t they?

Have a taste of something new.

You can’t do it.

Don’t talk about changing the world because the power of words can’t stop rape.

I’m not out to change the world with my words.

I want to change your perspective on change.

I want you to listen.

Don’t talk, don’t write.

You’re crowding the world with your self-righteous morals,

Putting a Band-Aid on an amputation festering with gangrene.

Listen instead.

You don’t need to be old or rich or smart or big to do that. Everyone has ears.

Some people are just more deaf than others, even if they can help it.

Listen.

You can hear the beaten child crying now, can’t you?

That, my dears, is change.

Change your perspective on change.

Words are useless. Crying is not.

Don’t change the man in the mirror.

Don’t even be him.

Then he won’t need to be changed.

And since when has he listened to you anyway?