Worldview

Her worldview was shaped from birth; her internal vision informing her choices, her responses, and her direction. She reached for a world in which she desired to live yet saw a world in which she had no place. She succumbed to the inevitable sadness that accompanies broken dreams.

His worldview was shaped from birth; his internal vision informing his choices, his responses and his direction. He lived in a world created for him and saw no other world worth venturing into. He wiled away the hours in blissful inattention to her broken dreams.

Her sadness floated across the waves, inking them with blackened tears as she longed for a future filled with colour. She stood on shores of despondency, believing in that future, wondering if there was room for hope. She counted her filled pockets; years of gathering hope and let herself dream. And started to let herself wonder.

He sat on sunny shores, toes scrunching sparkled sands, his life one of privilege; his heart saturated with emptiness. The waves carried her tears to his shore and he picked some of them up, feeling her sadness. A note from her heart slipped into his pocket and he wondered if there was more to who he was.

Her hope grew like a forest, her broken worldview being repaired and like a stained glass window, shining a new type of light into her vision. She stepped aboard her hopes and dreams and wondered, as the waves that sparkled drew her ever nearer her dream, what it would be like to live in a world without tears. Her pockets empty but her heart full, she drifted in the company of others whose hearts also carried them across the seas.

He sat on the shore, his mind searching the seas, reflecting on the latest hopes and dreams and their worldview. A place they sought for peace and refuge no longer their destination. A place of fear, unknowns, and too much like home, the inevitable holding pattern. His pockets overflowing, he wondered what one person could do.  Two fighters battled: his heart embracing a new worldview; his mind laying down the laws and precepts of his founding fathers.

She sat on the cold wet ground, eyes wide, internally screaming, externally mute as she watched the colours seep out of each one’s hopes and dreams. There’s no place like home, she thought, except this place. Her stained glass window view had been replaced with darkened walls and iron cages and she crawled back into her known worldview, for there at least, she knew her enemy. Despondency wrapped its arms around her and she fell into its sleep again.

His nights became sleepless as he wandered the halls of his echoing home. His heart had won the battle and his worldview was being transformed. He penned letters. He called influencers. He spoke with political kings and queens and yet nothing budged. His newfound worldview started to crumble; his frustration etched in his torn-off fingernails.  For what can one person really do?

(c)2016 Miriam E. Miles. All photos available at www.unsplash.com

A reflection on the refugee status and the conflicting worldview of many Australians with the worldview of our leaders.