Monsters
As a youth, due to a ‘joke’ played on me by a friend, I developed a fear of the dark. Actually, it was a fear of going to sleep, terrified that I would not wake up. Many years later when I ran into this friend and had them laugh at my falling for and believing their joke, was when I really realized how cruel and manipulative some people can be. It was the beginning of understanding how people can be monsters.
Looking back, I feel that living out here, our lives were somewhat sheltered. Our country existence allowed us freedoms and protection. We didn’t have to deal with some of the things that went on in town. Our monsters were bats that got in the house, a rat in the dog food or an injured dog howling in the night. In my innocence, I never realized that people could be monsters. Finding that out, changes one.
There are many ways, that people can be monsters, and there are many types of monster. The bully who feels they have a right to tear you down, make you seem less. The entitled one who feels they have every right to make your life miserable and cause you to lose things like jobs, home, friends. The arrogant ones who think they are self important and ignore those around them. The ones who cause actual physical harm to others.
Social media creates and enables people being monsters. Attacking and ridiculing those who believe differently. Attacking and threatening, insulting, tossing out venomous diatribe toward anyone who expresses anything they do not agree with. People often waiting, lurking, scrolling through posts looking for ways to attack others and make them less.
Major news sources are creating and feeding monsters. Fear drives people to do many adverse things. Many people do not bother to research for themselves taking what they see, hear, read for gospel and running with it creating worse situations. Sound bites, thumbnail images, are what the monsters feed on and create their venom from.
Ignorance, in all of its forms, feeds the monsters. Not bothering to really understand an issue. Not bothering to research. Not bothering to seek the truth. Preferring to spout, ignorance in bliss and attack those who attempt to correct and inform
Lack of empathy, lack of compassion toward others. Rather than reach out to uplift, they are more determined to tear down. Rather than find ways to assist the ones in need of any sort, they go out of their way to make life more difficult. Not caring and on occasion enjoying their actions and the results from those actions.
Lack of control of emotions. When self control is unheard of and angry runs free and uninhibited. When emotional anger manifests into physical violence.
When people forget that we are all human. We are all on the same journey, life.
As I travel, I make a determined effort to look for those who are fighting the monsters. Who stand for those who are in need of a champion. I look for those who are determined to reach out a hand to lift up those who have stumbled. Those who share food, warmth, compassion. I look for the teachers, the warriors whose armor is hope, peace, love. I look for the peacemakers, the voice of calm of reason. The ones who seek a better way, and to bring all they can along with them on the journey.
Words from The Dirt Road 
These are my thoughts as well…
Well said! Usually it’s human beings who are creators of monsters and it’s, sometimes, difficult to recognise them as most of them are hiding behind a mask of being good.
That is true. I have seen many people hiding behind masks such as that and they tend to be the worst.