WITCHES

High school often requires the most mundane, mind-numbing books. So, hearing of a book about a town setting people on fire was pleasantly unsettling. My eleventh grade teacher distributed The Crucible and, intrigued by this society of witches and magic, I devoured the book and realized it might not be far removed from reality.

We all live in Salem. When facing the inexplicable, instead of seeking truth, we create a reality constructed to satisfy our minds. We accept a surface level logic of trickery, a rationale to ease discomfort. It acts like a puzzle piece that fits into an available spot, only for the wrong picture. Sure it completes the puzzle for some, but the image is distorted. Much like Salem, we are a society taught to believe, not to discover truth. We are so afraid of the unknown, we’d rather believe a lie than participate in the uncomfortable process of uncovering truth.

Relativity has become the lethal comforter of the mind.

Upon serious reflection, we realize we have become a generation living with thousands of contradictory truths controlling our minds and decisions. We are taught not to think: “King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk,” “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally,” mind-numbing quotes, not learned but memorized.

We believe in witches; our witches look different. We believe our predecessors when they ignore the “unfit,” but we need to be okay with the “unfit” because a solution based on a limited reality is not a solution, it’s an incongruous puzzle piece. We are becoming a product of falsehoods disguised as truth. We’ve forgotten how to enjoy the process of discovering the truth and instead defend the perspective based on a created reality that only supports one solution. Maybe, if we embrace the possibilities and live comfortably in the unknown, we’ll embrace truth.