I hate how people envision a utopia.
So perfect. So flawless.
A future in which its history is erased.
The blood, sweat, and tears that went into its creation,
All swept aside and forgotten.
Where are your graveyards?
Your memorials?
The walls covered in bullet holes?
The shadows burnt in the brickwork?
When the people who built your utopia all die, do you expect to toss their bodies aside?
Forget their names? Their faces? Their contributions?
Do their stories not matter?
Is a future that is scarred somehow less worthy?
If humanity were represented as a single person,
I could never imagine our final stage being flawless and beautiful.
No, they would be marred with scars. Lost fingers. Burn marks and bullet holes. Legs so wobbly they can barely stand.
And yet, they smile as they look up at the oncoming sunrise.
Because through all the pain and all of the sacrifices,
Through the harshest toil and darkest nights,
Life always has a way to make itself worth it.
Because a failure is not an ending, but a new beginning.
A new day of marching forward.
We are not made strong by casting off our wounds,
But in letting them heal.
Though we turn our swords into ploughshares,
The bloodstains are not so easily washed away.
A society marred by its history is not one that is unhappy,
It’s one that is living and growing.
Our future will not be constructed by the dreams of a flawless future,
But patched together from the dreams of the past,
Made from the blood, sweat, and tears of past revolutions,
Crushed and shattered and burned,
But nevertheless sewn back together.
A scarred mosaic of all the hopes and dreams of every human who wanted to be free.
Is that not a true utopia? One where everyone who ever contributed may become immortal?