Week after week, I stare slack-jawed at articles and video reports detailing the suffering of people within and outside of the United States’ borders. I struggle to determine what surprises me more: the physical and mental anguish these people face or the callous comments of those who cheer at others’ misfortune.
For one reason or another, many have decided that people who fall under whatever demographic they despise deserve to live under conditions that would break their hearts if they saw their parent, sibling or child undergo the same trials. But when neither they nor their loved ones are affected, many people check their compassion at the proverbial door.
This apathy toward fellow human beings is something I cannot understand.
When I was 6 years old, I put a tape into our VCR and watched “Pokémon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back” for the first time. In the film, a series of Pokémon (living creatures that are central to the franchise) are cloned and forced to fight their traditionally birthed counterparts. The human characters look on in horror as the Pokémon battle one another to the point of exhaustion before the main character sacrifices himself to end the fighting. Only then do the cloned and non-cloned Pokémon settle their differences and learn to co-exist.
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The leader of the clones, Mewtwo, comes to the following conclusion: “I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”
Let’s break this quote down into its two parts as they apply to humanity. Firstly, whether we are born rich or poor, Black or white, cis or trans, citizen or immigrant does not matter. Or at least, those distinctions shouldn’t matter—because in the end, we are all human. Nevertheless, time after time, we hear the loud, ignorant voices of people who want to elevate themselves by deciding that an opposing demographic is somehow “lesser.” To speak on the second sentence, if
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