Runaway truck ramp

At my Dad’s school there was a tradition.

On the first Monday of term,
the second years
would round up the first years
and beat them up.

They called it “Basher Monday”.

Like this,
there are some pains
that pass through
generations.

When I said I didn’t want children,
it wasn’t because I didn’t want them.

It was because I overheard
at a bus shelter
a child receiving
a dose of the pain its parents
had hidden from themselves.

The world, too, is sick.
A runaway truck of violence that contains
the sum total of our individual unconscious pains.
War, climate change, pollution, inequality,
injustice are all on board.

But like the pebbles on a runaway truck ramp
each one of us has the potential
to absorb part of the impact.

To take the pain we feel
and transform it.
To seek out its roots,
to feel its towering intensity,

• and do everything it takes not to pass it on

The lives of our children depend on it.

There are two things that give me the hope
that we can change the world:

That when my Dad was a second year,
“Basher Monday” ended.

And that together, a million 10 gram pebbles
can stop a ten tonne truck