HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK???

Hey everyone.

This one may seem pessimistic.
I wrote it in my diary two days ago
after hearing a shockingly egotistical remark
from someone very close to me.

Although I must skip several lines
out of privacy and respect for the individuals
of whom I speak
and whom either know my feelings already,
or will if and when they are to lay eyes
upon this rapidly-growing page.

The comment stunned me,
shaking me and evoking within me
an emotion that we all feel and know
but are perhaps too cowardly
or too proud to acknowledge.

Yet, the storyteller strives to speak truth.
so, in truth I come,
and in truth I hope to go,
and it is truth that I will now utter to you,
dear reader,
as my lips quiver in the growing cold
and I struggle to reveal to you what is real.

I'm scared.

This is how it read:

It is 2:59 a.m.
My eyes grow weary as I stare down upon your ever-patient pages. It is after Shabbos, very late at night, and I struggle to keep awake. So why do I bother? Because I have a message which I feel obligated to convey to you.

And so, it is this:
I am afraid.

Why are people so stupid? What is it that lies within us that makes us so desperate to know that we're better than everyone else?

Why do we assign social values and labels to separate and break the few ties we still hold dear? Somehow, we think it is our "value" assigned to us by a very corrupt society that has the capacity to sum up who we are.

But then, if we are not compared to one another, what is the reference from which we define ourselves? Are we so terribly uncivil that we must push someone else down to make ourselves feel higher?

And furthermore, what is this great idealistic pleasure to be gained from knowing we're better than everyone else? If we spend our lives chasing that dream, what do we end with?

Either we've knocked everyone around us down mercilessly, or we've surrendered as worthless in total depression. Either way, it often seems, we end up 5 feet under ground in a pit of dirt, the same place the bodies we so worship came from to begin with.

Perhaps I sound terribly pessimistic, but I don't understand what it is that we're running to . . . or from, for that matter. Everyone seems to follow a pattern; truly so desperate to fit into a mold of silence, darkness, and power; the ultimatum of our modern definition of what is "perfection."

How ironic, then, are our undeniable differences. It is very strange that we have this inexplicable urge to push down our oppressors to rise to the top, yet we have no idea as to what the race is for.

In reality, we cannot compare ourselves to those around us because we have relatively nothing in common. There is no scale upon which to judge a man that will weigh his brother in justice.

Why is it, then, that we turn to others for judgment? Certainly there is some generic criteria for good and evil, yet who are we to deem ourselves capable of distinguishing these differences?

"One man's loss is another's gain," how sickeningly horrible are those epic words. We feed ourselves the feasts of our own bloody destruction for no other reason than the momentary sensation which is really so very detrimental.

Men often take pleasure in another's pain. The feeling of power, of the subservience of their brothers, is an addictive drug which ensnares their entire beings, blinding them to the very ideals of which they once spoke so passionately.

My Psychology teacher said the other day that our minds are manipulated. But I can't help but wonder why we make it so. It must be an active decision, for nothing can take power without its subject's consent. Yet we give that consent so willingly when someone, anyone, tells us to do so.

I believe in the Question. The epic, "If," "But," and "Why." These words have become so lost, so buried in the turn of days. Yet I dare to unhatch them once more.

For instance:

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if the government didn't steal it all away? If it wasn't taken from him though he longed to feel it beneath his hungry teeth? Perhaps the reason he is unable is that he has been robbed, as so many in this country, of his home, his job, his money, and his very wood. Maybe if he didn't so worship all these trivial goods, and just didn't care about his entire life being shipped to corrupt yet some more already miserable lives in factories overseas, then maybe he would be able to get a few logs in.

However, as we're all too busy cutting down any trees that are still around to further contaminate our already polluted air in the chase of our own greed, poor Woodchuck probably doesn't miss wood at all as he likely has no idea of its existence.

He probably lives in a two-bedroom condo in Florida, which was probably just foreclosed because of an economy that's falling because of people who care too much about a green piece of paper with a face, a number, and the power to corrupt a world.