Seriously

As the title suggests, this will most likely be one of the only serious posts I share. I promise with my next post to return to my typical self-deprecating humor. I am sharing this because I felt inspired to. With the controversy surrounding the KONY 2012 movement, I have had the topic of human suffering and injustice constantly stirring in the back of my mind and in the center of my heart. I came across this entry from my "inspiration journal" and realized it describes exactly how I feel about the KONY campaign as well as other related issues. I am not a political activist by any stretch of the imagination. I don't have a solution. Is this journal entry simplistic? Perhaps. But that's kind of the point. Let's strip away the rhetoric and look at this from a basic human level. After all, that is what we are dealing with here: human lives. Lives of children which are being destroyed in the worst ways imaginable. I, for one, would like to raise awareness about it, and this is why:

I first came across this poem in fifth grade. It moved me so deeply that I have remembered it all these years. Coming across it a few months ago, it still moved me to tears. I have now memorized Dunbar's heart-stirring words:

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,

And the river flows like a stream of glass;

When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals-

I know how the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;

For he must fly back to his perch and cling

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing,

And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars

And they pulse again with a keener sting-

I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings-

I know why the caged bird sings!

This poem inspires me so much because it describes vividly one of the most basic human desires: freedom. During Dunbar's life, in this country, there was an entire race of people who were not granted this God-given, most basic of human rights. Today, through the efforts of many who followed Dunbar's call , blacks enjoy the freedom and equal rights every human being should have. But many people in this world do not. Many people are still caged by fear, oppression, and bigotry. How can this be happening anywhere in the world, whether on a large scale, like the women in Afghanistan, or on a more personal level, like an abused or molested child, who has had their freedom to believe in the goodness of humanity forcefully and brutally taken from them? How are there still cultures who feel the right to oppress hundreds of thousands of human beings? Has not humanity become more enlightened than this? Dunbar's words are so stirring because they are universal. I think everyone has, as some point in in their life, felt trapped or caged by something out of their control. For some, it may be an abusive situation or a debilitating addiction. For me it was a crippling depression. But through all that we endure seeps that primal, yet divine, most basic of human yearnings; to be free. I also believe that this poem is meant to do more than simply cause us to empathize with Dunbar, or the caged bird. It is a call to arms to help all of the other caged birds. As I read it, another great literary work centering around a bird comes to mind; Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch plead for the freedom of a wrongly accused black man; a battle which he ultimately lost. I am also reminded of words from one of the greatest fighters for freedom; Martin Luther King Jr., who said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." The words of Dunbar, Lee and King are a call to action; a cry for justice; an invitation to use the freedom we enjoy to fight for the freedom of the oppressed everywhere. For, if the person living next to us is being oppressed, are we truly free? Or are we all together in one giant cage with bars of hatred, apathy, ignorance and intolerance?