[Nomad]

"nothing gives human beings pain longer or so persistently plagues the human memory than questions which have never been adequately answered. every parent who has survived a child, every lover who is lost to the one they live and breathe for, every person who realizes that they have egregiously harmed another, every culture whose prophets and wise people seem to have abandoned them to chaos has experienced great pain over the same unanswered question: 'why?'

the lack of an answer to that question, an answer we can understand and except, causes a gnawing ache in the chest and a loss of equilibrium from which we never fully recover. we only learn to go on without the sort of balance we had before and hope that one day we will learn not to notice the emptiness left behind in our hearts. this, my dear friends, is where we must come together and embrace compassion for one another with great urgency. compassion for every muslim. for every sikh. for every pagan. for every buddhist. for every jew. for every christian. for every agnostic. for every athiest. for every law abiding citizen and every criminal. for every teacher and every student. for every leader and every working person; for the poorest among us and the richest. for every woman, man and child. for every straight person and gay person. for every race, ethnicity, religion and philosophy, ability, size, shape and kind of human being we should have compassion because each and every one of these people understands the grief that arises from an unanswered 'why'. the blank, painful space of 'why?' is never filled entirely, never heals fully and it is the one thing all humans know. from this commonality all other common threads can be interwoven. we all know the grief of the unanswered 'why?' and so we know too the strength it takes to go on from that void of understanding. it is with this commonality in mind that we should begin our work toward peace. we must begin by acknowledging the grief we have in common over our own painfully unanswered 'why?' " Desmond Tutu