Blue Sky, Part Two

A long time ago, I wrote about the blueness of the sky. It was about the tragedy of moments where wonder goes unnoticed, and the importance of treasuring those moments. It was also about how blue the sky is. (It was actually mostly about that. It was a sweet post.) But adulthood is a series of bittersweetnesses, and time has come for bitterness.

The sky in Shanghai is always gray. In the absence of government regulation, big industry's unbounded growth has enshrouded the city under a permanent blanket of pollution. As I sat under that smog-choked canopy, thinking about how I missed the blueness of the sky, another, more grievous tragedy hit me: There might be people who are born in Shanghai and spend their whole lives there, and never even know the sky is blue. It hit me pretty hard.

In my previous post, I bemoaned how sad it was that there were people in this world with full access to the blueness of the sky who never appreciated it. I said it seemed "like a big deal to me, for some reason," that there would be people who never got to love something the same way I love it. In a sense, this was an arrogant, shallow indictment of something irrelevant to begin with. Who cares if someone doesn't enjoy something as I do? Who am I to complain about that? There are countless things people enjoy I don't fully appreciate, like horticulture, or sewing, or NASCAR, or marine biology. But the hypothetical Shanghai-dweller is different, because they never even got a chance to love this thing I love. Unbeknownst to them, they were denied the opportunity.

The horror of that epiphany hung with me until it was overshadowed by an even harsher, more painful one. It came from the testimony of a thirteen year old Pakistani boy who said before Congress, "I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray." To my ears, his words rang with the bitter jadedness of children who are forced to grow up too quickly. This is a person -- a child, no less -- who once loved something beautiful, but whose love was taken away from them by something ugly. I've written before about how the transcendent power of love can subsume strong hatreds. But this can also happen in the opposite direction. The reverse side also has a reverse side.

I'm not sure why I wrote this. It definitely wasn't to tell you to not take things for granted and treasure what you have -- that message is so cliche I nearly fell asleep typing it. It wasn't intended to be a thinly-veiled political message about environmentalism and anti-war sentiment either, because I don't like writing political opinions. So maybe I wrote it because I secretly crave that melancholy feeling that comes after expressing something sad. Maybe I wrote it because I wanted to show myself how adult I am, and I equate adulthood with cynicism and bitterness. Maybe I wrote it because I actually have become more cynical and bitter over time, and this is just who I am now. Whatever the reason is, it doesn't matter. The sky is still as blue as it ever was, and I still love it. But some people never will.