This
has been quite a week of reading rants. And the reading has led to more
critical thinking than I have done in quite a while. There are hundreds
of thousands of armchair critics pointing fingers about wasting drinking
water, unfair police, racist policy, politicians on vacation, and I
only have one thing to say: Do something about it. Think ALS and breast
cancer are getting more attention than
the disease you or your family is experiencing? Well, fill us in and get
us up to speed on awareness. Did you know that Lewy Body Dementia is on
the rise and is far more debilitating than Alzheimers? I didn't either
until I had a friend suffering the shock of it through hospitalized
parents. The only way to get past the stigma is to put it out there. Do
you think the police have too many rights and privileges in a democratic
society? Then bring a discussion to your local community on how it can
avoid the same situations we just saw from a distance. Adding fuel to a
fire already raging is counterproductive. We should be outraged enough
to be talking to our friends and neighbors about better rapport with law
enforcement. It is our right and our duty. Scale your rage into
workable points and goals and demand that your local officials take them
to regional officials, to state officials, to federal officials, to
international think-tanks.
Let me ask you how many times you
step out of your comfort zone to volunteer in your local community each
year. And this isn't about volunteering at the inner city soup kitchen
on Thanksgiving Day, this is about the other 364 days of the year when
the children that live next door might not be getting breakfast on a
weekend morning because there is no free meal without the public school.
Adults are the ones who lob the threats back and forth, but children
are the ones who suffer the most. Regardless of your religious
affiliation or political affiliation or complete lack thereof, children
are the only hope we have of making changes. It takes a village to raise
a child and that isn't necessarily a village half a planet distant, it
is a village you live in and contribute to.
Is it popular to
say I grew tired of all the finger pointing in the news this summer?
Well, no. Is it too much to ask that we find something positive in our
lives daily to share with our fellow humans to give us hope for another
day on this planet? Probably. But we should all try.
I will
leave it at this: Every society has extremes. If extremes make you
uncomfortable, do your best to come to terms and an understanding with a
moderate form of the extreme. If you feel uncomfortable at a homeless
shelter, donate time to stock a local food pantry. If you have an
uneasiness of mentally disabled adults, perhaps try volunteering for a
pet therapy program for rehabilitating patients. If you fear death, hold
the hand of one patient in a hospice facility. The only way we can
become more human is to do things with actual humanity in them. And
these, dear friends, are the stories we should share with each other
over coffee, in a public park, with children playing in the distance. We
should live at living.
