We are the end. — Rina G. Patel

In transit from Ubud to the Gili Islands, Indonesia

I spent the last couple of days in a town in Bali called Ubud. It was made up of tourism, but probably one of my favorite towns. I’m currently on a boat being transporting to Gili Trawangan, one of the Gili Islands in Indonesia. I’ll finally be meeting back up with Shaili and we’ll be heading to Singapore together in the next week. We’re slowly approaching the end of our backpacking trip, which is hard to believe. The last few months have flown by and I’m sure the next few in India will too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going on in the world and up until now, I’ve been hesitant to voice my thoughts. I’m going to say something that I told my sisters after they told me to cut my trip short. I told them that nowhere in the world is safe- not India, not Philadelphia, there are bad people everywhere just as there are good people. At the same time, there are even more places that are safe in the world. Don’t let the media jade your view of the world. We always have been and always will be living in a world of chaos. Nothing has changed except now there are different sets of people delivering the chaos.

I do think what’s going on is crazy. Bombings, hostage situations, shootings- this isn’t normal. This isn’t the theft, murder, rape, poverty we “should” be “used” to seeing or hearing about. I will take caution, but I won’t be paralyzed by fear. Just as the sea is vast, so are our minds and our hearts. However, we find each other living in the box of our minds, not even realizing we are trapped. We resist to acknowledge that we are ignorant or at fault. We say things, but our actions make those words powerless. We have the ability to open both and interpret people and situations things in the most simple as well as most complex sense. With the way things are headed, I think the latter will win in the end. It’ll make our world even more complicated. Things won’t get better unless we all open our minds and hearts. You can call me a pessimist, a realist, or both (something not many people will describe me as), but I don’t think the end of humanity will be a meteor or the sun getting too close to the earth. We will be our own tragic end.

We’re humans, a jaded race. Stifling through the land we’ve demolished gasping in the air we’ve corrupted, standing on the mother we’ve disappointed, cleaning the air we’ve polluted, killing in the land of our brothers. We are tragic. We are greedy. We are vicious. We are the end.