Tapping into Social Conscience OR Shaking Up Society

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Few people set out to deliberately hurt others. It’s just a sad fact of human nature that some  are so blinkered to any if not all home truths that it’s just the way they are; we can take it or leave it. More needs to be done, especially in schools, by way of educating the blinkered among us to the harsher realities of life, an how we can combat them.

With several people who have played a significant part in my life, it took 20+ years before I finally decided to call it a day. Since being diagnosed with prostate cancer in February 2011, I have written off more fair weather friendships. 

There was a time I’d have been philosophical to the extent of being stoical and simply accepted the situation, telling myself I was being selfish and others had their own lives to lead and resuming the friendship once this or that crisis to which I had been subjected and they preferred to turn a blind eye had passed. Not anymore though. Since turning 60 (born in 1945) I decided that enough is enough, and time is too precious to waste on such people. .

So why do I feel so guilty about it...?

It is easy enough to jump to wrong conclusions or fall prey to false impressions passed on and further distorted by gossips, hackers and the like. I guess we need to give people - especially family and friends - the benefit of any doubt; it works both ways, though ... doesn't it?

[Update 2/2016: I still feel much the same way if not more so. Having spent nearly eighteen months learning to walk again after smashing up my foot in a bad fall during the summer of 2014, I now know for sure who my real friends are. I was housebound for five months during which relatively few so-called friends could be bothered to even pick up a phone for a chat, which would have meant a lot. Oh, I haven't given up on all my fair weather friends, but our association is much the worse for wear and I will see to it that I spend far less time with them than in future.]

This poem is a kenning.

TAPPING INTO SOCIAL CONSCIENCE or SHAKING UP SOCIETY

I’ve run the gauntlet

of love, life, fun, and tears,

trying to make the best

of things rather than complain

about the worst years,

struggling to rise above

the pain human beings

inflict upon each other time

and time again

I turn to nature

for comfort and brief respite

from a daily torture

humanity asks me to endure

with all the dignity

and stoicism of someone

always expected to put

other people’s needs before

his or her own

I lie awake at night

wondering who or what

is wrong or right

amongst all that’s been said

and done in the course

of whatever merry chase

mischievous Apollo

and outcast Cassiopeia care

to lead us on

I am that heartbeat of humanity
embracing its own vulnerability

Copyright R. N. Taber 2011