Dear Little One

Dear Little One,

I am sorry that we are failing you.

Helplessly standing at the side-lines as your world tumbles in around you. Despite the shouting and protesting from those who can see what is happening, those who can make a difference remain silent, either adamant in their support or whispering their disdain with the hope that they aren’t really noticed.

Cries for intervention ignored as your life is torn from you. The crumbling ruins of a home that you once shared with a doting family, enjoyed mealtimes with loved ones, and laughed happily with siblings, continues to fall and break away. Brick by brick, bit by bit, it all disintegrates between the fingers of those vowing to protect and nurture you. Your little life is treated as collateral as you are unsympathetically ripped from the arms that lovingly brought you into this world, snatched from the love that gave you life. 

This is not the life you asked for, not the one you deserve.

Dear little one, 

I am sorry that this world is such a cruel place where those who can truly make a difference choose to look the other way, choose to excuse and justify when they should be shouting in disgust, demanding that your little hands and feet are safe to play again, your little heart is safe to love again, and your little face safe to smile and laugh again.

You are not just collateral, you are not just another statistic, another image flashing across our screen during the 6 o’clock news. Your little life was worth so much more, just as much as those who stand with the aim to rationalise such brutality, those who choose not to see you, an innocent child, but focus their efforts on the place you were born, the religion you are and the nationality you have. 

Your pain and despair is not solely an image on the TV or within newspapers. This everyday reality of torment and fear is being lived by those you know and love. I am sorry that we are not heeding the lessons from the past. “Learn from history or we are destined to repeat it” has been relegated to simply some words that roll off the tongues of those who apparently lead us rather than the reality they choose to live by. Their whispers of condemnation are deafening while the defiance of others is telling.

So again, we are failing. 

Those with the opportunities to make a difference idly watch the repetition of mistakes made and experienced by the generations before us.

And as they watch and justify their silence, your little life is ignorantly disregarded and dragged hopelessly into a history that we will look back on with shame.