Coffee with Chuck

Song: Someday We’ll All Be Free (1973)

Artist: Donny Hathaway

Album: Extension of a Man

Thoughts: Today is obviously a somber morning. I wake up and ponder the world we live in. I question how can such evilness exist? How can there be such a disregard for human life? What drives a person to go into an elementary school on a Tuesday afternoon and act as a grim reaper and take so many lives? I do not believe these are divisive questions to ask. I do not think preserving human life should be a divisive matter. Also I am a believer that children and people of all walks of life should not be in fear to go to school or shop for groceries. However, that is the world we are in today. We live in a world where children go to school wondering if it is going to be their last day. We live in a world where people fear that they will not be able to cook the meal that they went to the grocery. This is our reality. Today’s song is Someday We’ll All Be Free. Donny Hathaway recorded this song in 1973 he was singing with the hopes that people will be able to be free from the evils of the world. Hathaway never directly names these things that keeps us from freedom. Therefore, he allows us to name the oppressor. Today, I am saying the thing that is impeding our freedom is the violence which comes from the lack of humanity in our society. Aforementioned our civilization is one where humanity is so easily disregarded. Thus in this society we see and experience daily episodes of violence against humanity. This episodic viewing of violence has made it so that many have become numb to the violence and have been desensitized by such acts of terror against children, Black folks, Asian folks, brown folks, and LGBTQIA’s individuals. And because we are becoming more and more sedated by the violence we will only see the violence persist. Moreover, I am becoming pessimistic that we will be set free because our country is a country that is divisive in so for as that one party will say that the sky is blue the other party argue that it is green. It is this division that I do not see freedom and I am truly becoming a nihilist. However, Hathaway was singing with the hopes of a future with freedom. I think it is imperative like Hathaway that we do keep hope. Hope is what keeps alive. Hope wakes us up in the morning. Hope is what excites us. We must never relinquish hope. We must always hold hope close to our hearts. We must strive to protect all lives with hope and we must live out our lives with hope. If we commit to this hopefulness then future generations may have the possibility of a society that has freedom of violence and live in a world where they are not numb from violence. This is the hope I am singing with today. Peace!

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