on downward spirals and bones through flesh

written july 2025 ☆ edited november 25, january 26, & june 26

I was on an evening flight home from Washington DC when I read the second half of Sunrise on the Reaping. I'd met the strangers next to me, a young nurse and a less young grandfather, while asking the latter to take a photo of the clouds as we reached them. He made an admirable attempt that resulted in several macro shots of the fog on the window. I decided it wasn't important. I asked about the grandkids.

I had been in DC for a summit on humanitarian law that left me exhausted to the bone. Dispersed among the fifteen-hour schedules were meetings with frustratingly bureaucratic representatives and talks about the enforcement of international law that went in downward spirals. It wasn't just that these high-profile reps believed change was difficult. It was that they didn't seem to have a will to try. I'd made incredible friends and relished my solo hotel room but I was in desperate need of answers. The people were lovely. The food was fine. But all I really cared about was the conversation.

My flight's evening departure left me with most of the last day unscheduled. Along with a few peers, I spent the day in the harshly lit spiral hallways of the Holocaust Museum. I learned more than I knew there was to learn, looked into the eyes of thousands killed by the fascist machine. Unintentionally, my time with the stories of the 1940s and Panem landed on the same day.

So there I sat, in my last-row Boeing seat that was enough to think about in itself, reading about a near mirror of our world while reflecting on several humanitarian conversations, imagery from history’s most famous genocide, and the symbolism that America’s capitol bursts with.

I read every word of Collins’ latest with the world’s latest in mind. I have often heard the Hunger Games world referred to as an extreme example; reviewers describe it as the ultimate dystopia, some shocking nightmare that we should be grateful not to live in. But it is not merely a scary story to put down. At the end of the day, as with any worthwhile literature, the lessons learned in Panem’s world apply to our own. In the depths of the despair painted by Collins’ expert brush, all I could see were the bloodied bones of our collective ancestors braided brittle among her words.

During this humanitarian summit, a law student in attendance had described what she viewed to be the so-called pendulum of human rights. If there were some measure of how well humanity treats each other over time, she said, it could be visualized in the form of a pendulum swinging back and forth. She began with the World Wars, in which new methods of mass death sent the pendulum to one end. Then, she said, the wars' end brought a global shift towards human rights and social justice, swinging the pendulum again. Then came the height of the Cold War when humanity brought itself closer than ever to extinction; the pendulum swung back.

A few more examples followed suit, the 2008 financial crisis among them, but I was more focused on her shrugging demeanor. She spoke with a casual tone, as if she were sharing that her hair couldn't stand the humidity. I’ve been thinking about how cyclical history feels for a long time, but to me its repetitive nature has always been a problem to be solved rather than a reality to accept. Instead she described it to end a conversation, and that specific nuance in her tone was the most hopeless moment of that conference. The idea that there is no more, that nothing else is possible, that we are born into a world where we will oppress or be oppressed for eternity, running around in vast, uncontrollable, Sisyphean circles that span lifetimes, is completely and utterly devastating.

Visiting the Holocaust Museum only reinforced this idea. Walking by image after image of the cruelty that fear is capable of enabling, understanding the causes and prerequisites of that cruelty, and then returning to the daylight only to know those prerequisites are being checked off by the handful, only this time in a world with more severe capabilities for surveillance and more severe capabilities for falsehood, was not something I’ll forget soon.

So, back on board the Boeing. In row 31 of a packed plane, snippets from that law student’s speech narrated state-mandated murder, whether carried out by Goebbels or peacekeepers or Congress. The book sped on and I felt the pendulum swinging with the turbulence, still vast, still uncontrollable, still Sisyphean.

I did land, though, safely. And right before I did:

You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?

No. No, it does not. History’s pendulum does not follow Newton’s rules. With enough to push it, it can stick to one side and stay there. Like Collins says, that process might take generations. But to even contribute one second of that push, to even nudge the ball in the right direction, makes it all worth it in the end.

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