Who are your brothers, who is your sister. Let’s bring back thoughts of humanity as family.
–––
I am my brother’s keeper, it is my responsibility to live with my brother in mind. I cannot assume it to be enough to think of my brother when it is time for a tax deduction, or societal applause. I cannot place myself above my brother if I am to be one with my brother, it won’t work. As a doctor, if I am my brother’s keeper, then my medicine cannot be out of reach of my brother for any reason at any time.
I cannot presume privilege because I was born on one continent over another, or on one side of a line than another. For I was given a responsibility to care, that was my mandate for life. It is because I take this seriously that I eat organic food, I plant flowers for bees and butterflies and I limit my spending for cheap material goods.
Some think these actions to be of elitism and money, or of a fanatical desire to live forever, but they are in fact my act of peace and support of my sister. These choices are my way of not participating in the subjugation of my sister, the enslavement of my sister, even if she does not know she is a slave.
I see the bars around my brother’s house, I see the chains at his ankles and I see the blindfold he wears making him think he is free. In front of his eyes, plays a mirage of goods and words of freedom with an always tantalizing option of success dangling just out of reach. I see the story he has been told, one where his life gets better if he just buys a bit more. I see how he has been led into the arena, pitted against his mother, his sister, his father in a battle for something which doesn’t even exist. I see this, and I call out but his ears have been tuned to only one message.
Which is why I choose what I do. I am my sisters keeper and her life is my own. For all my freedoms, for the things I see which she does not, I am not free until she is. My body cannot heal unless she can, I cannot claim victory if she is wasting away. As she is fed modified foods, poisoned with weaponized spray, as she drinks water filled with industrial waste, as she is shot up, drugged, and made ill by those tasked with healing her, I too am made ill.
I am my brother’s keeper, which is why I stand here and will stand speaking this message for the moments in between news broadcasts and reality shows where a second of silence lets my voice through screaming,
“You are not a slave!”
“I am my brother’s keeper, it is my responsibility to live with my brother in mind. ”
—
So true!