I want to admit something. It's been just the worst stain on my mind, eating away at my thoughts whenever I have a spare minute. I killed a living thing the other day, a fly, for the first time in years. And that's not an exaggeration, it's been years since I've intentionally killed something. It happened without hardly any thought, just the quick flick of a magazine and the poor creature lay dead on the ground. Just bare seconds for me to act out. Just a few seconds of not fully thinking and something lay dead on the floor. Awful nausea filled me afterwards, guilt like I've never felt before filled me with grief. It took seconds for me to end something's life that had every right to live. Probably more right than I. Even now days after, I can't help but feel disgusted at myself.
It was just a fly right?
That's what most of you are thinking, or think, but the minute we start devaluing life in such a way, is the minute we start to become less human, in my opinion. It was a fly, but that fly was made by billions of years of evolution to make something so perfect for surviving in today's poisonous landscape. That fly had every right to life as any of you do, as I do. Saying it was just a fly is an excuse, and a poor one at that. It is an excuse to do whatever we please, to go ahead and take things for granted, to destroy what is not a right to us, but an amazing privilege.
That fly probably had more dignity, more honesty, than I will ever have.
It's definitely something I will not soon forget, nor shall I be allowed to. It's when we forget who we are, what we stand for, what we want to be fighting for, and what we should fight for, is when there truly is no hope for our species. That's when we are truly lost.
(sidenote: what's with my capitalization of the first two words in my title, i really need to get a handle on that)
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