You don't need to die for me

You don't need to die for me to survive. I do not need your blood in order to make my way in this world. I do not need to scream in houses of religion that you are pigs and apes. I need to see in you, and you need to learn to see in me, that we each have the potential to be much more than we are. Under long ago stars, your ancestors sat at the same fires mine did, and feared the same elements. You needed me then, and I you. How could we have forgotten?

You are all the handprints on the wall, the hundred year old names carved in the old barn behind the house. I am too. You have walked many of the same roads. You are my brother, my sister, father, mother, grandfather, daughter, and son, for every shadow you cast is just like each of theirs. I do not need anger, and neither do you, although we each have much to be angry about. We have only eighty years to walk our way in this world, and then our shadows yield to those who will in turn be us. It is a long road. A short road.

Won't you walk it with me?