Eyes Open

When I was a child, adults would always
make me go to bed before I was ready to.
I would lie in the dark, trying to keep my eyes closed.
But they would open back up, almost of their own accord.
It occured to me that 'eyes open' was my natural state.
Is it any wonder I call myself an 'Insomniac'?

The brain is an amazing tool.
It can do dozens of things at once
without the brain's owner being aware of it.
It keeps one alive,
it has invented thousands of devices
to help and heal and hurt,
it can weave great works of art
and literature and music and deceit.
People have been known to heal themselves
through the power of the mind.
Some can remember things photographically,
while others can perform
complex equations in their head,
still others write symphonies
without picking up an instrument.
So why are so many people
so very insistant on being blind?

When I was younger,
I was usually off in my own little world.
I could be at school supposedly paying close attention
to the teacher while in my mind I was battling monsters
or discovering new worlds or meeting strange and wonderous creatures.
I would insert myself into every television show I watched
and book I read, and in every show and book
I was a different character. Someone other than myself,
someone living a life more exciting than my own.

Then I grew up. I looked around me,
at the real world before me. I saw the things
I'd tried to avoid in my idealistic youth.
I started to see the truth behind my make-believe.
I began to understand all the lies
and hypocracy I'd been fed since birth.
I realized how wrong this society is,
the way certain people are treated:
Women, different races,
different sexual preferences, just different.
I was intrigued. How dangerous and wonderous
and scary, this brave new world in which I lived!

People could be much more threatening
than the monsters in my many nightmares.
A monster usually just wants food or territory;
easier to fight than a person wanting
money or drugs or sex or power.
A corrupt politician can't be defeated with a sword,
no matter how sharp. Like the heads of the Hydra,
two more will rise to take his or her place.
The more I learned about government-
-especially in recent years-
-the more I realized the American government
must be changed.

In the face of fear, the majority of Americans
were willing to give up their freedoms-
-those liberties that made this country great-
-for 'protection.' But how do we protect ourselves
from the government? More importantly,
how do we protect ourselves from...ourselves?

The danger is not in bombs or guns
or humans wishing to induce terror.
The real danger is the complacency which
has settled over this society like a suffocating fog.
The true deceit lay in the lies we tell ourselves.
The most powerful weapons the current government wields
are the blindfolds we allow them to tie around our eyes.
So many are so wrapped up in living their lives
that they don't have time to pay attention
to what the government is up to-
-or worse yet, they don't want to see it,
out of fear or apathy. At the end of the day,
they're too tired from working their 9-5
or their double or their whatever
to do something about it