Spreading hope and energy

Mino Akhtar www.sufidialogue.com June 7, 2021

Have we turned the corner on COVID pandemic- it is hard to say! I was talking with my cousin Farhat and she said that how she could not even meet her brother and family in Dubai for Eid in mid-May. One of our friends was going to a wedding in Chicago on the long weekend, but the wedding got canceled as one of the guests went wedding shopping in Pakistan and the whole family got COVID- the father passed on never to return to his home in USA. There are lockdowns in some countries, and relaxed rules in others, such as our country. I have noticed in New Jersey that traffic jams and stressed drivers are back- too bad they did not take their COVID lesson seriously!

One of the things I had noticed in the COVID lockdown is that the fear of random shootings had reduced, as people were not congregating anywhere in large numbers. However, that short-lived hope got shattered too as we have seen daily shootings all across the United States, from nightclubs to workplaces. I feel very sad as I hear the news every day. I wonder about the perpetrators- broken hearts that lead to disturbed minds and tortured souls- which lead to buying a powerful military weapon with no check points to stop them so that they can spread their own inner torture to many innocent souls and families caught in the crossfire. I feel mad at the small but powerful lobbies that control our government, such as the gun lobby, the armaments lobby, and so on. Their small and greedy minds, stingy, merciless hearts and short-term thinking has a huge cost.