Daily Write - I Wear Black

I wear black. I wear black in a world wear pink is the new black and blue is the new grey and all this changing of colors makes me wonder why I was ever taught the color wheel in the first place. In this place that is driven by what’s next, what’s new, who wore it and where can I get it. A place were the more it sparkles and the most it costs, the more it must be had. Where it is never too short and it is never too low and there is no such thing as too expensive.

I wear black in a place where no one looks you in the eye any more. They are much too busy talking on their Blue tooths, making appointments on their Crackberrys, or adding to their latest blog on whatever social network is fashionable for that hour. Talking over lunch is replaced by texting. Getting together for a movie is substituted by reading tweets. People tote around cellphones that costs as much as my rent payment, but never have time to use them to make calls to people that really matter. Time is spent to much more important things than keeping up with your friends.

I wear black. I wear black. I wear black.

I wear black in place where no one notices you unless you are loud and obnoxious. Where stepping on your friends and pushing aside your peers seems to be the only way to act. Where acts of duping, coldness, insensitivity and callous are rewarded. Compassion is shunned. It makes one soft. You must learn had to drive the bottom line. All that matters is the end. How you got there is irrelevant. Your friends are your potential enemies. Your enemies are your targets. People are speed bumps, hurdles and steps you must overcome to get to where you are going. In this place, you must be loud. You must scream at the top of your lungs or no one sees you. No one hears you. If you are not loud, you do not exist.

I wear black as I watch men and women change themselves inside and out to attain a skewed version of beauty. Eating, not eating, cutting, injecting, scraping and pulling, all running after a golden standard that is splayed all over magazines and billboards, television and internet. It is forgotten that our mothers and fathers called us beautiful when we were young. Instead we wish to fashion ourselves after airbrushed photos of perfection, not grasping just how fake our measuring stick really is. Tossing away rare beauty, I watch as everyone wants to look like another her or him they saw on the red carpet, hoping that in emulation they will become beautiful too.

I wear black. I wear black. I wear black.

I do not understand. Where did it all go wrong? How can we get it back? Where are the days when life was simple, enjoyable, where people were people and not mindless drones chasing after a standard that is unattainable? When did things matter more than people? When did material possessions become the only thing that life was about? When did infatuation become the center of this place that I live in?

I have no answers. I have only questions. And I watch as the painful march goes on. I watch my friends. I watch my family. I watch my world around me. I do not know what to do, so I wear black.