If I really gave a damn . . .

I would do something. I would be something. More than just talk. More than just printing articles off the internet or Tivoing a special on TV.

Happy World AIDS Day. Happy day to give a damn about something that is killing off whole populations. One child every minute. Too many women--mothers--to count. Women have no rights in Africa--

Wait a minute! Africa? Africa?! Who cares about them, right? They're not even people, are they? Not like we are, anyway. Besides, it's probably best for them to die, because they're nothing to us. Wipe out the whole continent, and let us just forget it ever existed.

Yeah. There's a solution. Except they are. They are something to us. They have to be. Because if they aren't, then we're dangerously close to being nothing ourselves. Besides, they must be something to someone.

Whole families are being wiped off the planet. There are too many funerals to properly mourn even one life lost. There are too many graves to mark. People are being forgotten. It's as if they never even existed. Imagine that.

But I know your name. I hear your pain. I desperately long to draw you into my arms and wake up with you in another world where this agony is just a long-distant nightmare. Where it isn't real. Where it doesn't exist. Oh, God . . . if you were mine.

So Happy World AIDS Day. Happy day to give a damn about people who are nothing to us but everything to someone. The world to someone.