The world is broken.
I see it in the headlines –
more bombs, more starvation, another atrocity,
another child’s face that I cannot unsee.
Fairness should rule but doesn’t.
The scales tip toward the loud, the powerful, the already-full.
I watch good people lose faith and wonder why the story
no longer seems to end the way it should.
Bullies should be punished, but they aren’t.
Instead, they are rewarded with flatteries,
their destruction mistaken for strength,
their aggression rebranded as ambition.
Life should be fair, but it isn’t.
The lottery of birth determines everything—
your race becomes destiny,
accidents of geography become life sentences.
The world is broken.
So is my heart.
It cracks a little more each time I see
a child bombed beneath rubble and sky,
the wailing mothers whose grief I cannot fathom,
children going hungry in a world of abundance,
the powerful wearing their smirks like armour,
their twisted logic already prepared,
already polished,
already deployed.
Where is hope?
I must find hope.
Not for myself alone,
but because the suffering need hope—
the promise of a better tomorrow,
the belief that their resilience will be rewarded,
that endurance will pay off.
I must believe
that this is a temporary imbalance,
that long-term, justice will prevail,
fairness will be restored,
and bullies will be seen for what they truly are:
not strong, but cowards.
Not powerful, but morally weak.
Not winners, but misguided souls stumbling in darkness.
But what do I do now, today,
while I wait for the long arc to bend?
The antidote is not more hate.
It’s choosing to be the world I want to see—
one small act of defiance against the darkness.
Like the hummingbird who carried droplets to the forest fire –
Wings too small, beak too tiny, task impossible –
it must try anyway.
Because without hope,
We cannot go on.
When I see cruelty, I practice compassion.
Not as weakness, but as rebellion.
Not because it will fix the world,
but because it fixes something in me.
I choose connection over division.
Compassion over hate,
Sunrays over storms.
That’s a better way.
I believe in tomorrow
even when today is unbearable.
The world is broken.
So is my heart.
But a broken heart that still beats,
that still hopes,
that still loves—
That is the antidote.
