Since this exodus from ignorance, into a more enlightened mind, I carry a critical lens everywhere I go; I examine a situation, why it happened, and how everyone involved, then, internalizes it. It's a simple ritual that helps me (even if I'm doing too often) understand the world around me, and my place within it.

This feeling is nauseatingly - understandably - reminiscent of Ta-Nehisi Coates' expression, in Between The World And Me. He claims some prolific words:

"The gnawing discomfort, the chaos, the intellectual vertigo was not an alarm. It was a beacon."

Coates grew up, to say the least, different than I. He, poor, afraid for his body, fighting relentlessly not to lose it, black. I was a bit different - again, to say the least. I am the son to successful and financially stable parents, a benefactor of a suburban childhood, and moreover, its education system, a product, not a burden, of my country's whims, white. Yet, he and I aren't so different because, beyond the fear (or lack thereof), there is a mind, a relentlessly pursuant mind, and a soul capable of any feat of thought. That's the dividing factor: capable. Of course, we were both, and obviously, in retrospect, willing and able - neither of us knew it yet.

Yet, I was handed everything, and I certainly never feared my life, for it was filled with dreams of greater suburbia, college and a family - a mere reproduction of the family that created me in the first place. For having not realized it already, 19 years into my life, I have failed - but I get a second chance, a luxury not afforded to many. Coates, however, couldn't misstep. He was, from how I understand it, ever-searching for a purpose, no, an identity. He and I were blinded by our own social mirages - privilege or poverty, black or white - so we arrived late to the party, we couldn't fix it. He is more prolific than I, he capitalized upon his one chance and achieved profundity with little words of inflection, but words of character, emotion and humanity. I have been trying, simultaneously, to do the same, in a continuous, never-ending flight of second chances, incredible opportunity's that would not have been afforded to me otherwise. Surely, even with my own ambitions, and further intellect, still, if I were Ta-Nehisi, I would've surely failed.

I do, everyday, in the most exhausting manner, feel a repressive thing. It is characterized by a want for change, a human world, and too, a depressing realization that neither change, nor humanity have been realized. "It" can be anything - my parents misplaced pride; my peers confusion; an intellectual conversation that changes nothing; a selfish, hopeless, fearless adolescence of "those who believe they are white," and who, since they cannot care about their own people, surely will not look to the projects with a helping hand - but a continued, again, mirage - of uninformed feelings of superiority and as Coates rings it, "personal exoneration."

So, this is an official call for change, togetherness, humanity, and love, beyond all circumstances of human plight, disaster, occurrence (of any kind), into a world where "brother" is more heard than "hater."