Not a protest. Not a performance. Just the truth—unapologetically lived.

By the time you read this, someone will have already posted something cruel online.

Someone will have shared a video of another person in crisis, not to help, but to mock. Someone will have justified brutality, celebrated the erosion of someone else's rights, or turned suffering into a spectacle. And somewhere, another person will shrug, scroll past, and say nothing.

I used to think if people just understood what was at stake, they’d care. If they read the stories. If they saw the data. If they met someone different from themselves and sat with them long enough to listen. I don’t believe that anymore.

This isn’t pessimism. It’s clarity.

We’re living in a time where decency is treated as weakness, where cruelty is a currency that buys attention and applause and monetization. We’re not in a crisis of information. We are drowning in it. The crisis is will.

People know. They just don’t care.

Or worse, they do care. But not in the way you think. They care that someone else is finally being punished. They care that the rules are being rewritten in their favor. They care enough to enforce a hierarchy that puts them at the top, even if it means watching others burn.

I used to explain. Educate. Debate. I don’t anymore.

Because what am I trying to prove? That trans kids deserve to feel safe? That Black women should be able to age without being called angry or disposable? That people fleeing war or climate disaster or poverty aren’t threats but survivors? That human beings deserve to be treated like human beings?

No. I won’t beg you to care about that.

We’re past the point where that makes sense.

There are reasons people choose detachment. It protects them from accountability. It allows them to watch someone suffer and still sleep at night. Empathy, after all, is expensive. It costs time. It costs power. It costs comfort.

And when systems are built to reward distance, to normalize othering, to turn people into caricatures or hashtags or moral threats. It takes active, daily resistance to stay human. Not everyone is willing to pay that price.

But I am.

And so are many others. Quietly. Steadily. We’re not trending. We’re not shouting. We’re planting gardens. We're writing. We’re showing up to school board meetings. We’re texting our friends and checking in on neighbors. We’re finding one another and building new circles of care that don’t require us to shrink or plead.

Because at some point, you stop trying to convince the wolves. You stop hoping the fire will put itself out. You start gathering water and building shelter.

I want to live in a world where people are grounded in their humanity. Where you don’t need to make a spreadsheet of your pain to earn compassion. Where people show up because it’s right, not because it’s trending.

But that world isn’t going to build itself.

So I’m done making the case. I’m making community instead.

And if you’re one of the ones who still feels it…the weight of it, the pulse of care under all the noise and numbness. I hope you know you’re not alone.

There are people out here, staying grounded. Practicing empathy like a daily prayer. Choosing to remain soft in places this world would rather we be sharp.

Come sit with us.

We see you.

We still care.

Even when no one else will.