So this is utopia

She first remembers the people. Not anyone special or different, just everyday people. The elderly woman sitting beside you on the train who would look over at you with a smile; the bespectacled father walking his daughter along the beach, covered in sand and fragrant brine; the lulled baby boy, listening close to his mother’s heartbeat as he sleeps; these were the people she first though of. It wasn’t politicians and soldiers and business owners who changed the most, it was the people. The ordinary, everyday people going about their lives, tossing bits of kindness to one another in the form of smiles and loving quips. For they were the heart and soul of this hideous, manmade world. They breathed air into the lips of a dying earth.

She thinks about trust. After all, trust is the life blood of society--the thread that weaves us all together. If not for trust, we would be nowhere.

We are nowhere.

An infectious utopia has destroyed us, she thinks. This sinister, deceitful idea of peace--this dream that humans can exist in a state of contentment without reaching for more, more, more. Never realizing that to take more is to take away from someone else. To protect yourself is to drive your neighbor away. But they never realized. After this ‘utopia’ began, the paranoia grew and grew--neighbors barricading themselves away from one another, clutching guns and metal bats instead of family and friends. Fearing an end that they were bringing upon themselves.

And now those elderly women brandish bats instead of smiles, those bespectacled fathers clutch handguns instead of their daugthers’ hands, and those baby boys grow up fearing the outside world, hearing shouts and screams instead of their mothers’ heartbeats.

This utopia is but a delusioned anarchy, she writes. Her pens scratches so desperately against the paper it almost begins to rip. Eyes squeeze shut. Fingernails dig into soft flesh.

She opens her eyes and lets the tears fall.

So this is a utopia, she writes.

I wonder, is there a true utopia out there, a paradise without inherent violence? It must be across the ocean or above the clouds, for I have never seen it. It must be magnificent and colorful, for it has sucked every drop of rosy color from the people’s faces here, and every ounce of blue from the sky. It must be a truly kind place, for we have no kindness here anymore. The people huddle in meager groups, shivering in cold and fear within their houses. It must be warm, for the sun has bid us adieu. It must be loving, for this place has no love anymore.

So this is utopia.