Diversity and inclusion stories: White cloud and black cloud

White cloud and black cloud

By

Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher

It took time, to understand.
It always does, when everything is wanted, except to do it.
That's why we need patience.
And that's why I now feel infinite gratitude for those who have had it with me.
A white cloud.
That’s right, a born white one, with all the advantages from that.
The classic cloud, adorable in its soft and elegant shapes.

Protagonist of blue spring or summer scenes, portrayed and admired with smiling looks between more or less childlike drawings and more or less spontaneous photos.
Everything was perfect, at first, even if it was not at all, but it’s hard to see the contradictions of life, where you are unscathed to the cynical vagaries of destiny.
Until they arrived.
Yes, the black clouds.
The cursed version of us.
To stain the scene and the story.
To push the audience look away.
Or worse, to instill anguish and worry of all kind.
“The heavenly vault is great,” some suggested. “There is room for everyone and belongs to everyone.”
Such naive good-natured clouds that pontificate from the fortunate regions, as kissed by perennially favorable climates, so I pointed to them with hot rage.
“It’s not their fault,” others explained, “they are only victims of merciless winds and unpredictable drafts.”
Why don’t you welcome them in your corner of heaven, then? That’s what I used to retaliate with searing livery.
“It’s the consequence of global warming,” some even dared to observe, “which makes everyone's journey foolish.”
Yes, of course, and in the meantime I denounced the risk of our disappearance.
Because black clouds are not like us.
They don’t integrate and tend to be alone among them.
They’re here only to bring darkness and fear.
This was my sing-song lament.
All around fear, yes it is, a key word and emotion inside this absurd story.
I was convinced that I knew exactly what it was.
As long as the nightmare has come true in the most complete way.
Suddenly, I became the enemy.
Because this is also the nature of things in the sky.
The white cloud turns black, sooner or later.
Here's what fear really is, I thought and felt.
Even before seeing it in the eye that observes and ignores.
Even before warning it in what shows off next to you, with more or less studied distance.
And even before discovering that there is no inverse journey, in this inevitable change.
However, there is something as extraordinary as it’s incredibly precious beyond the horizon that we have stupidly turned into a border.
The awareness of what you are, or could have been born.
The responsibility and the weight of being the one who, in spite of the futile exteriority, will irrigate the world.
And more than anything else, the never too late compassion for what I have become.
The most misrepresented and neglected fragment of the firmament.
I said it at the beginning of my life and now I repeat it.
It takes time to understand.
There is always a lot of it, where this is not really what you really want.
But if it finally happens, you know that becoming the other it's the only way to stop hating…