This is not a feel-good post

I hope it makes you feel uncomfortable.

I had a sleepless night thinking just how guilty we all are. I also know many will fight it even if they know deep down I am right. Because they can’t be wrong. Or guilty.

We were dealt. a bad hand, all of us. From the. leaders in their 30s that were handed a country at war to all those who inherited a nation torn by war, non of us got a good deal.

It doesn’t matter which side of the war you were born to, what our fathers handed down was a broken nation, untold pains and war wounds still bleeding. This is not the subject of this debate. It is also not debatable.

And some might even argue our forefathers inherited a trap, a nation made complex by design, for the benefit of the thieves from Europe. Those who stole entire continents are thieves, not masters.

And our leaders, after the war have much to answer for. Roads that don’t drive, education that can’t think, power that stays out. They have dealt us a horrible hand, they could have done better but didn’t.

Worse than a bad economy, they ate our commonwealth, leaving behind distrust and fear, each suspicious of the other, unable to see the victim on the other side, each victimized

But we lie if we fail to see that we are failing too. What we are preparing for the next generation is not progress but anger. We have replaced curiosity with prejudice, we preach love but eat bitterness.

And what we give our leaders are faith accompli, our choices a guarantee of hardship, every purchase, every single time we buy foreign when we have options, we sow poverty.

To rebuild our economy, we need sacrifices, people dialing down not because we are the best, but because giving the chance, our offsprings can be the best. Sacrifice is a choice, progress the prize.

And when we tell all the dark tales and discount the black heroes, when we fall into the trap of selling our continent short, we deal a bad hand to our leaders and an impossible one to the next generation.

When we embrace, daily, our people who oil the wheels of national looting, employees & charlatans in government institutions that deliver nothing but drain our resources, we are guilty by our embrace.

And every leader, no matter how bad, has a home, comes from a family, has friends. And we are the friends that never stood up to them, we are no less guilty by our silence than they are by their graft.

And so each generation handed down broken pieces, dealing the next a hand that cannot win. Yet we must break that circle, become the generation that looks beyond her own pain and into the future.

Your fathers are waiting for an apology from the thieves beyond many oceans, they won’t get one. We are waiting for acknowledgement from those who went to war, it is not coming.

And while we argue, while we wait, while we simmer, the world keeps moving. Each year makes our task much harder, our chances slimmer. Yet we are not without blame, not from our offsprings.

There are no rituals to fix what is broken, no one to hold our hands. There are rights and wrongs but we are all victims of the war, all puns in a bigger war still. I say we stop fighting, start building.

I say we stop arguing and hating and blaming. I say we stop waiting for people who are themselves waiting for the pall bearers, stop waiting for people who are done talking.

I say we start treating our country like it deserves the best of us, start putting back what we took out, start buying what we do, start doing what we can, start giving before we receive.

I say we raise our heads once more and be proud, hoping that the last selfie of our generation won’t be with our heads down, teeth chattering, fist clenched: let’s punch the air as we depart.

If you are uncomfortable, channel that energy to something positive, to writing the history of today. You can’t undo our past, you can barely write it. But you can define the future, you merely have to believe in it.