An open letter to history
Dear History,
I do not regret to inform you that my generation has broken free from your near-eternal grasp and has decided to leave you behind. We are no longer carrying your ideals like a baton with us into battle, but instead have decided to carve a new path and decorate it with our triumphs. You have held us back from your antonym, future, for far too long. You have used our ancestry as a noose holding us in mid air, a type of purgatory for progress.
Our struggles are no longer rooted in Tiananmen Square, the jungles of Vietnam, nor a mere wall of concrete in Berlin. These artifacts of your's are now simply your corpse for us to rarely look back upon as a reminder of things that will never plague our planet again. No longer will we look back on Gettysburg as an achievement, but as a single step that took us too long to make.
My brothers and sisters will no longer be distinguished by chemicals in my blood, or the land upon which I entered this world. These remnants of you will not take hold of our consciences to guilt us into continuing the wars of your legacy. We will no longer consider our community to be an eight block radius around the roof over our heads, but an endless horizon stretching as far as the clouds.
We will not stand idly by again while you rape us into an infinite cycle of hatred and misunderstanding.
We will not let you pervert our cultures as a thinly veiled barrier between us.
We will not let the ghost of you shape the ghosts of us.
We have overcome.
I do not regret to inform you that my generation has broken free from your near-eternal grasp and has decided to leave you behind. We are no longer carrying your ideals like a baton with us into battle, but instead have decided to carve a new path and decorate it with our triumphs. You have held us back from your antonym, future, for far too long. You have used our ancestry as a noose holding us in mid air, a type of purgatory for progress.
Our struggles are no longer rooted in Tiananmen Square, the jungles of Vietnam, nor a mere wall of concrete in Berlin. These artifacts of your's are now simply your corpse for us to rarely look back upon as a reminder of things that will never plague our planet again. No longer will we look back on Gettysburg as an achievement, but as a single step that took us too long to make.
My brothers and sisters will no longer be distinguished by chemicals in my blood, or the land upon which I entered this world. These remnants of you will not take hold of our consciences to guilt us into continuing the wars of your legacy. We will no longer consider our community to be an eight block radius around the roof over our heads, but an endless horizon stretching as far as the clouds.
We will not stand idly by again while you rape us into an infinite cycle of hatred and misunderstanding.
We will not let you pervert our cultures as a thinly veiled barrier between us.
We will not let the ghost of you shape the ghosts of us.
We have overcome.