I think that all there is that is left for me to say
is ‘I’m sorry.’
You sit there by the window staring out at a world
that is barren and colourless, and maybe you’re watching the soft fall of the
snow on the road, or the raging of a monsoon breaking the iron heat of a
parched land, or perhaps you’re stranded, looking out from your tower to the
city below spread out like the entrails of a broken land.
I wish to apologise to you for the world that I will
be leaving behind. Not for the Earth and all that grows and lives there. Not
for the seas that roar and crash in their darkness and peacefully lap the
shores in blue-green clarity. Not for the mountains, the lowlands and the air
that you breathe. No, but for the continuing arrogance of my kind; the
arrogance of knowing what is right.
Children, we have imprisoned you in your homes; we
have made sure our cars can drive anywhere and destroyed your freedom to play;
we have built on your playing fields and put fences around your woods. And to
keep you quiet we have given you all kinds of entertainment so that you will
never need to leave your bedrooms – you can live in a world of images and
sounds that entrance, excite and exploit you. But your bodies want to be free
to move, to discover and to play.
You are being put in chains by our ideas, by our
certainty that we know better than you and we know what is best for you. We like to dress you up in uniforms so that
you look the same as all the others, force you into vast buildings, have you divided
by age and coerced into tests and examinations that will determine whether your
life will be a success or a failure. I’m sorry that we’ve made you into
faceless, disposable, mechanical units. You, with all your beauty, life and
energy, will be bound into a colourless book that contains the story of your
lives before you’ve had a chance to live it. And we’ve sought to dominate you
through fear; fear that divides; fear that paralyses; and fear that makes you
fight your fellow beings.
We’ve forced you into thinking that to compare and to
compete is the only way to live. So, quickly you will forget to help, to listen
and to share, and instead you will be required to lie, to force your opinions,
and to take all you can for yourselves.
Have you seen the images of children lying lifeless on
the shore, in the bombed ruins of their homes, and the hungry deserts of the
world? Have you seen the tidal waves of rubbish that choke our seas and
strangle all creatures? Have you seen the scars where once were trees and where
all manner of living things moved freely? And have you seen the grinning men
and women who tell you that they know the way to make your life better, while
they make the money that keeps you in chains in a room with no doors and a
screen instead of a window?
You may not have seen them yet, but they are there, I
assure you. And you know what? I put them there; I am sorry.
So, I’m participating in this story of which you are
part, a story consisting of conversations from the past and the present; a story that is not just made up of words. It’s probable that I will
not see much of it, but you will. And the first few words of this story are:
‘Does it have to be like this?’... Our lives will be the answer.
