I ignore the evils that support my quality of life, to which I’ve become accustomed. We’ve arranged to make the evils that benefit us invisible.

Elisa Gabbert

Do we actively make the evils that benefit us invisible or do we just ignore them? Is that just a semantic distinction, a removed rationalization for paralysis and inaction? As suffering surrounds us, does it matter whether it is invisibility or ignorance that ties our hands and silences us? We go about our business, eating cake, in the midst of it all. What impact does our individual action really have on global evil?

I want to believe overwhelm and cynicism — not pure selfishness and cruelty — allow us to accept and ignore evil. In a world where the sea is so big and my boat is so small, it is less painful when we disconnect from our individual impact on the collective whole.

So what to do?

We plant trees.

By planting trees, I mean both planting actual trees that our world so desperately needs, and also the metaphorical trees we plant when we teach, learn, and connect. As we plant, present meets future. Trees that surround us are living histories that have survived generations. Their roots know the earth and their branches reach the sky. They are not invisible and they quietly demand to not be ignored.

We make art.

Becoming an artist starts with realizing everyone is an artist. Let me explain, and hopefully calm the third grader inside me that was told I can not draw. In the truest sense of what it means to be an artist — someone who creates from a unique and powerful space, and leaves the world changed even just a little through their creation — we make the invisible visible and stop ignoring the sorrow we feel and see through making art.

We tell stories.

There is tremendous power in story. Like language itself, stories are a way through ignorance, isolation, and indifference. Everyone has a story. Every story has value. We shout, whisper, sing, whatever it tales to get the story out. Once a story is shared, we learn about ourselves and others. From that space, it is possible to see and not ignore evil.