With media covering, en masse, the riots in Egypt, I began reflecting on the protests of the 1960s that occurred a decade before I was born. I have been thinking about what it takes to move masses of people to finally have a say on the streets and a committed willingness to put their lives on the line for what they believe in. My friend from college, Terrence Cheng, used his imagination to write Sons of Heaven about similar protests in Tiananmen Square, China. He too wondered, "what if?" and wrote his first novel through imagining who the man was who famously faced the tank in the 1989 protest.
Times change, populations shift, and power corrupts (absolute power corrupts absolutely). Watching the events unfold in Cairo has me thinking about John Lennon and the way he once imagined. I'm not sure I believe in utopia (at least when humans are involved), but it is a concept we should strive for.
The sun will rise again. The sun will set.
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