FOR OURSELVES AND FOR THE SAKE OF OUR WORLD

I read this article recently – “India Razes Slums, Leaves Poor Homeless” – what I thought would be the last thing before I closed up shop for the day. The first words that came into my mind and heart, echoing the song Easy To Be Hard . . . “How can people be so heartless? How can people be so cruel?”*

I know this happens all over the world, including in our own country. But at the same time, it is beyond comprehension. Beyond sanity to believe that the people affected are not cared about by those who make the decision to bulldoze their homes, as well as by those who actually demolish their homes.

She, her husband, five children and other relatives erected a hut to live in – a home that provided shelter and a base for her husband’s street-side blacksmith business.
The problem is that the land they built on belongs to the government. And the government has decided to take it back. In a matter of minutes bulldozers level the place, leaving Devi and her family perched on a bed atop a sea of rubble.
They have nowhere to go.
“They did it so fast that there was no time to take out anything. And the bulldozer broke everything on the way,” Devi said.
“It’s like we were picked up and thrown away,” she said.**

How hardened have people become that they can bulldoze someone’s home and belongings without feeling a thing – with a closed and locked heart?
How many government officials the world over live like that, act like that?
How many politicians globally go through life like that?
How many citizens live their lives on this earth that way?

And why?
Because they have closed and locked their own hearts to keep from feeling the pain of their own lives – especially their early lives as children in this world . . . when someone bulldozed them . . . their home . . . the home of their body, mind, heart, and soul.

How to unlock and open their hearts again? Our hearts again?
Do our own inner work of psyche and soul to heal the wounds, the traumas, the pains of our own childhoods . . .
for ourselves and for the sake of our world. ***

(c) Judith Barr, 2009

* “Easy To Be Hard”, from the musical “Hair”, James Rado/ Gerome Ragni. https://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/hair/easytobehard.htm

** CNN.com/asia, “India Razes Slums, Leaves Poor Homeless,” Sara Sidner.
https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/14/india.slums/index.html  (Accessed January 21, 2009)