Clueless. That’s what the world is. You think it’s beautiful, don’t you? You think it’s perfect on your finger, perfect against the soft skin of your throat. When you look at them, can you see it? You can’t? Well look harder.
Can you see their faces?
Millions of faces, dark skin streaked with tears and blood, painted with the expressions of horror and dying hope. Can you hear the screams? Can you smell the smoke and death?
If you hear it, if you see it, what will you do? Ignore it, you decide. You can’t do anything about it. But those images will stay forever. As you watch the stories unfold, watch the adaptations roll, hear the news, it will fade away into the fog of your forgotten memories.
It’s eight at night. As you eat your dinner, you turn on the news. You behold these images and clips of people sifting through mud and water, clothes bloody and gritty, eyes and souls dead and tortured. Twelve year old boys hold guns to their heads as they laugh at the trembling captives. As the reporters carry on, you mutter to yourself what most people whisper.
“Oh, my God.”
Then you switch it over to the Bears game to discover to your distaste that they are losing to Dallas.
They slip into your consciousness as you sleep. Horrifying images that make you ponder. You pray, the moonlight catching the shimmering glory of your engagement diamond. The screams echo. The blood spatters and the tears fall.
All for what’s not even the size of your pinky nail. Your ring could be tainted, or as they call them, a conflict diamond. Not all diamonds are conflict stones, but there is a good chance that they are.
Anything for business, right? Business is business.
Even if it costs people their lives and sanity.
Causing wars for trinkets that most of those people have never even seen.
One day in the future, will you recall those images and stories that you kept locked away for all these years? Will you bring to mind those boy soldiers sniffing cocaine and holding innocent humanity at gun point? Could you picture those trembling hands as they dig through muck to find what now rests on your now withered finger? Those tear streaked faces, those bloody clothes. The murdered society.
Will you remember?
Will anyone?