Hell on Earth begins where two flames of the same fire turn against one another.
A man can be damaged for years without anyone calling it damage.
The destruction can happen in public while everyone around him calls it responsibility.
His body is worn down by work and the exhaustion is called duty.
Even when what is asked of him harms him, he does not say no, and people call it love.
He carries fear in silence and the silence is called strength.
He gives away his time, health and direction, and the loss is called character.
He is often praised most when he abandons himself completely.
If the burden breaks him, the same culture asks why he was not stronger.
Tradition.
Family.
Faith.
Nation.
Success.
Progress.
Ideology.
These programs can disagree about almost everything and still agree that a man’s strength should serve something other than his own life.
How much of himself can a man lose while everyone around him praises his sacrifice?
How many decisions were already made for him before anyone asked how he wanted to live?
How many times did he defend the rule that was using him, then pass it on to another man?
Men not only carried these programs.
They learned to enforce them on one another: work harder, endure more, do not complain, provide, protect, keep going.
The hand of culture often became the hand of another man.
Men have already been given enough enemies.
These demands were placed on men.
They did not come from their nature.
If this remains only a page, another man may recognize his own life in it and still return alone to the same demands that were breaking him.
A page can help a man understand what has been done to him.
It cannot replace another man standing beside him.
Understanding what happened is only the beginning.
Change becomes possible when men no longer face it alone.
Will men continue giving their strength to systems that destroy them, or use it to build something that lets them live?