The Job I Want to Do: In the Era of Broken Glass

By: Anika Chauhan

The breaking of glass can be so much, compacted into such a little thing.

The shards that cut the hand that dares to try to remove them from others’ paths. The destruction of something so fragile that its breaking is more a question of ‘when’ than of ‘if’. The reality that nothing is permanent. The shatter that can break not just silence but also hearts. 

Who knew glass could be so destructive?
We didn’t because we’re more so. 

The greatest flaw of our race – and I imply the human race as a whole – is the conventional assumption that we have too few flaws. We tend to assume that we are supreme, that we are intellectual, that we are justified in regarding ourselves as the only “developed” species on our beautiful planet. And the ‘we’ here is, again, all of us, the human race.

That’s why I want to be more.

Everywhere the eye dares turn, there is either war or conflict or chaos, or suffering. Only last month, we were proven wrong in believing that we’re far from it. And this is while I’m not mentioning the climate crisis. (Don’t get me started on that, I can debate forever.) 

I am only a minuscule, insignificant dot in this vortex of lives. I am merely a microscopic, invisible element of the universe. 

I may choose to believe that such an unseen element will always go unheard and powerless.

Or I may choose to acknowledge that billions of trillions of such tiny elements – and even smaller ones, like atoms and molecules – together build the universe.

But here’s the catch: anything that can build…can also destroy.

So I will choose to remain invisible. I will choose to believe that humanity still possesses its conscience, and I will hope alongside a billion others, and I will wait.

Sometimes it’s up to us to choose to be more. Kinder, stronger, louder, quieter, bolder, humbler, better – all at once. Sometimes everything we’ve come to regard as “melodrama” can take our breath away, if only we choose to see its depth.

When I’m asked about the job I want to do, I feel like someone wants me to fit the seven colours of the rainbow in a matchbox and hand it over neatly and quietly. I feel like someone wants me to paraphrase an eternal, timeless song in one word.

If I had to, that one word would be ‘power’. And it would still be inadequate to capture all that is.

Our choices have that power. What we choose to do, who we choose to become, can construct or annihilate.

The job I want to do? I want to rebuild our long-lost ties with our planet, to reconnect our broken people across the globe, to reignite the fire of love and oneness, to heal the rifts that divide us, to foster the bonds that unite us, to honour the pasts we’ve forgotten, to construct a future we can be proud of, to leave behind no footprint that may defile our earth…

So I’ll hold out, hoping that my dreams echo without being spoken, that voices around the globe resonate in one harmonious chorus.

The glass will break. The shards will cut. The shatters will sound.

Let’s glove our hands, heal our hearts and stoop, and clean up the path for others yet to come.