Conversations You’ve Been Avoiding
Written by Lubaina Kapasi. Graphics by Laura Garcia Gomez.
This conversation is one I’ve been avoiding having with you.
Not because I don’t care, but because the world has always made me feel wrong for even wanting to have this conversation with you. Ignoring the world doesn’t make it go away. Every time you shrug at a headline, laugh at a protest calling it drama, call the news boring, or say politics is just noise, a little of the world’s urgency slips through your fingers. So here, I’m saying it bluntly, brutally and honestly: ignorance is not innocent; it is very much a decision that shapes lives. You are most definitely entitled to your comforts, but that does not mean you are exempt from their consequences.
Money is scary, something we protect our children from, yet do everything we can to give them more of it. Until you learn about it, it’s as light as smoke, and the moment you do, it’s as heavy as that same smoke trapped in your lungs. Money is the paper that is a ledger of someone’s labor and someone’s sacrifice. Inflation is not an abstract number you read from a screen; it is a mother skipping meals so her child can eat once a week. Currency is not neutral, not even close to fair; it chooses its winners and losers, legitimizes some lives while erasing others. To hold weightless notes in your hand without understanding their weight is to hold privilege without gratitude. Money is the system that shapes existence, and to exist without learning about it is to be blind to someone else’s design.
Corruption thrives in silence. It smiles when we pretend it does not exist. It grows when we look away. It falters when we understand it. It stumbles when we name it. It dies a little when we talk about it openly. See it for what it is: favoritism, nepotism, bribery, loopholes, power traded for comfort, promises broken for gain and laws twisted for profit. Corruption is bad, yes, but don’t ignore understanding it because you believe you can’t change it. Knowledge is your weapon, and conversation is your shield. Corruption is not an anomaly. To see corruption and pretend it is shocking is naïve; to understand it is to see how the world really works. It’s not tragic; it’s real. It’s the wiring behind everything you live in, with, and for. Study it. Name it. Speak of it.
The word “lawful” is defined as “something in accordance with a standard of what is right and proper.” We believe this without even realizing that laws are maps drawn by hands that already know the shortcuts. A government that works is invisible; a government that fails is everywhere. The government will do what it does, but the difference between not knowing and knowing is the difference between calling it destiny and recognizing the paper you’ve been handed to draw your life’s blueprint on.
Crime is not chaos. Punishment does not stop it. In the world we live in, punishment is often the first thing that stops. If you look close enough, you’ll see crime is a word for “what the world chooses to neglect and refuses to fix.” Poverty is built and handed down. We talk about empires, admire the rich, without realizing that it is money that buys or grows money. So what about the ones who don’t have any to begin with? Now, I’m not saying you should stunt your growth to help them, but as young adults, don’t deny that poor people exist for valid reasons. Not owning a Stanley Cup doesn’t make them any less smart, cool or relatable than you. The status quo is not kind to the vulnerable. When will we realize that?
You live across oceans from the country I come from, but distance does not grant you detachment. The world’s markets, migrations and politics are knotted together. Globalization didn’t flatten us into strangers; it made us neighbors with fragile fences. To be unaware is to be part of the problem.
I had been avoiding this conversation because I feared it would make us strangers. But silence is a choice too, and I would rather risk the awkwardness of a “you are weird” call than stay silent while the world falls apart and pretend the news isn’t your problem. So listen. Ask. Read. Disrupt your comfort. The world is noisy, yes, but it is not noise. It is, and you are, subjected to a series of consequences, and if you learn to hear it, you will find your place in it not as a spectator but as a maker of what comes next.
