Michael F. DuBois

In 7th grade, a boy came into the cafeteria during lunch and announced that that the World Trade Center was no longer standing. From that day, for a long time, I hated the people of Afghanistan. I did not know anybody from that country, I did not know what they looked like or how they talked, and I did not know how they felt about me. Yet, without hesitation, I hated them.

I look back on that as the biggest downfall of my childhood life. It was a confusing time, nothing made sense, and I came to conclusions without ever putting any thought to what I was deciding to feel.

September 11th passed, a war was waged, and slowly people went back to their normal lives. My life, went back to normal.

It took me a while before I actually sat down and thought about what had happened years before. I had forgotten about the hatred I had felt towards that country, forgotten the anger I decided to show towards these people I had never met, and in my new maturing mind, I came to a new decision.

Life is all about circles.

There are beautiful circles in this world. There are circles that take the water from the earth and turn it into rain to cleanse the world, there are circles that represent marriage and the coming together of two people, and there are even circles that represent life itself, the idea that we are born, gain knowledge throughout our lives, only pass it on to the ones we give birth to before we die. And yet, among all of these beautiful continuous circles, there is one that seems to shamefully rule above all…the circle of hate. In 7th grade, I did not know anybody outside of my small town, yet because I thought that somebody on the other side of the world hated me, I hated them back. The truth is, they didn’t hate me. Not all of them at least. And yet, because a handfull of people hated me, I decided to hate an entire country because it was easier than trying to figure out the truth. And because I showed hatred towards an entire country, they slowly began to hate me back, began to hate my entire country back. Pointless, meaningless circles like this lead to nothing but wars, deaths and more hatred. Where does it all end? When is the circle broken? How do we stop hating when the hatred of the world builds stronger and more complicated every single day?

When you are in a dark room, you begin to feel hatred towards the darkness, wanting it to leave. Yet, no matter how much you yell and wage war against the darkness, the room stays dark, you get no where. However, simply light a candle and the darkness is gone. The darkness, the circle of hate, will never break until we break it ourselves. Until we decide to light our candles, until we choose love over hate and lead by example, we will always be stuck in this circle. It takes one act of courage to inspire another, one act of kindness to fill someone with hope, and until we shed our light on the ones we don’t understand we will forever be stuck in this darkness.

So, I personally challenge you, every day, to shine your light in the darkness that you find. It is not easy, and it will make no sense in the beggining, yet at the end of the day, if we have all lit our candles, there will be no darkness left to curse, no hatred left to hate, and we may infact find ourselves at the beggining of a whole new way of looking at the world.

I may not know you, I may never meet you, but I love you.