Patty Mayeux Blog

Today I offer you a brief opinion piece I wrote during a recent writing class. The prompt was “It’s not that complicated,” and we were given twenty minutes to write. While I could embellish, clean up and tighten the writing, I am merely posting it here to illustrate the power of quick writing to a prompt:

Nothing is that complicated. Focusing on an issue can boil it down to bare bones. That’s all I see. Bare bones. Gone are the muscles that work so hard to pull me this way or that. Gone are the gory guts that beg me to look their way when all I want to do is ignore the horror. Gone is the skin that separates us one group from another. It’s just bones. Only bones. But where is the emotion in bones? Where is the passion of pulsing blood? Where is the tenderness of soft tissue? Where is the brain that leads me at times astray but also toward sense and civility? What of the heart? Where is the love that makes the world go around? 

Things are simple. We humans make them complicated. I have to accept living in a complicated world where I can’t understand the motives or the feelings or the history or the teachings of those who are bent on denying rights to people who are different. Otherwise, I’d be surrounded by only bones. Still, I don’t understand why there is war, why one group must rule over another. Country against country. Religion against religion. Race against race. Tribe against tribe. Sex against sex. Power and fame and money against lack. 

We all strive for connection. We all work toward a goal. We all want love. We all want to be seen, heard, cared about and cared for. How did we get so far off track? 

It’s complicated.