I used to think I live in an isolated pocket of the world, filled with goodness. Of late, though, I see that my ‘little pocket of goodness’ lies on stained strands of an extensive web. And this web connects me to darker pockets of the world. Pockets I didn’t know about. The sleight-of-hand, though, is that the strands aren’t stained when they reach me. Nope. I see them squeaky clean. But as I trace them to their origin, I see the murkiness that colours them.
An example of this murk is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Most people think ‘violence’ when they think of mixed martial arts (MMA). But there’s beauty, too, if you know where to look. A talented fighter moves with as much grace as a dancer, and plans moves with as much gravitas as a chess grandmaster. But that’s the UFC that reaches my part of the web. It starts somewhere else. It starts on the burial ground that is the UFC fighter after their career. After the lights, the roaring crowds, and the 6-figure (dollar) paychecks. It starts where their vertebrae have to be fused after years of punishment, and their damaged brain grasps for vague recollections of the good-old-days. That’s the murkiness I only glimpse out of the corner of my eye at the oddest moments.
Once I spotted the murk, there was no going back. There’s murk in the shoes I wear, born in a sweatshop. And in my laptop built from ore mined by slave labour. And in the brutality that brings me the meat I eat. And sure, I can stop watching the UFC, go vegan, and consume less. But there’ll always be dark pockets and I’ll always be connected to them. Just by waking up in the morning and breathing, I’m living off the horror of someone’s dark life.
So, does this mean giving in to an unvanquishable gloom? No, not really. But I think it’s important to recognize and accept things for what they are. There’s no skipping this step, I suspect. Once that’s done, there are a bunch of options. For me, now, maybe it’s time to go see a guy about becoming a vegan? 🙂