This is what I tell myself. “I’m not going to get involved. I’m not going to get involved. I’m not going to get involved.” Of course, I have opinions but mostly I keep them to myself. However, today I woke up and I was ready to explode. I was just about to start commenting on all the social media threads known to man; but instead I sat down and wrote this blog post.
i’m not naive. i know my reach isn’t very big
But it doesn’t matter. I have to say something. I want to say something, so I don’t forget who I was in this exact moment years from now.
i am white, causcasian, of western european descent, whatever you want to call it
Seriously, you can check my 23&Me results; it doesn’t get less diverse than me, but you see, my story doesn’t start or end there. My mom grew up affluent. Her father died when she was 10, and their affluence was wasted away in less than a decade. So, at 19, my mom was pregnant, unwed and living on a minimum wage job. By age 24, my mother had three children and get this, two of them had disabilities. Completely unrelated disabilities, but disabilities nonetheless. I get it, it sucks. It weakens the gene pool and is a strain on our society. Their lives waste away tax dollars through social security, disability and medicaid alone.
Modern medicine allowed us to keep people alive in new and amazing ways, without a plan for how we would pay for all these miracle babies when they lived long and full lives without being able to contribute to society. But they are my brothers. They shaped every fiber of my being, and their stories made me humble as heck. Because, despite the fact that I’m a white American, their stories are my stories. Which means that I also represent a minority, I represent the disabled, I represent survivors of poverty, I represent a statistic.
i have always grown up with a love of diversity
How could I love anything else? If I loved something else, I wouldn’t have loved the life I lived. So, today I write this post, and despite the dramatic retelling of my beginnings, this post is about fear.
You see fear might be the most powerful emotion that humans possess. Even on the hierarchy of needs, while safety ranks at the second level, and physiological needs ranks first, it’s still fear of death that drives us to find food, water, and the basic things we need to keep us alive.
fear rules people
The nation of America right now is a hot divided mess, for one reason, fear. Women are fearful that they won’t have the option to be considered equals. Mexicans and Latinos are fearful that they or someone they know will be deported. Muslim Americans are fearful that there will be war on their people and religious ideals. All Americans are fearful that the economy will crash, that our children won’t be properly educated, and that our nation will continue to rack up debt and drop in world influence.
Conservative families are fearful that they will lose their right to homeschool their children as they please and they will be forced to vaccinate their children. Faith communities are fearful that they will no longer be able to worship God as they please and that their religious liberties will be stolen. Millennials and Gen Y are fearful that they won’t be able to find a job or ever be free from their college debts. Baby boomers are scared that they will have to work until they die when social security runs out. Should I keep going?
Ok, I will. Racists and Misogynists are just scared too. They are scared that they will lose the way of life they’ve always known. They are scared that we will actually become the melting pot of a society that at one time we were actually trying to become. Which means all the future is unknown. There have been roles that made sense for thousands of years, and there’s no guide for an alternate future.
Women are scared that they will get pregnant and that the guy will abandon them and that they will have to raise a baby they didn’t plan for and possibly never wanted. Religious communities are fearful of a one world government, the Antichrist and being left behind when God judges the world. African Americans are fearful that they will be profiled. Cops are fearful that if they don’t profile, that they will lose their lives. People in poverty are worried that won’t be able to take their baby to the doctor. Every single one of us is scared.
ironically, fear keeps us alive
We were created to fear because it’s fear that keeps us out of harm’s way. We are hard-wired for self-preservation.
fear is our teacher
When we get burned, injured, disciplined or bullied, it’s fear that taught us how to behave the second time we faced a similar situation, but fear is not intelligent. Fear doesn’t understand the nuances that life actually brings. Fear doesn’t understand that just because something is different than you, it does not mean it is bad. You see fear strikes when something is unfamiliar, unknown and uncharted, and in those moments fear strikes back because it believes that it’s protecting what is.
However, progress is on the other side of fear. Unity is on the other side of fear. Love occurs when we push fear to the side. No, good thing can be accomplished, until we look fear in the face and say, in this moment, fear, I am not going to listen to you.
this is a message to every person that’s afraid – that means this is a message for everybody
Whether you are man or woman, white or black, Muslim or Latino, Republican or Democrat, dooms dayer or entrepreneur, whether you believe in homeschool or public school, whether you are racist or feminist, the only way to band together (EVEN AT THE LOWEST LEVEL) is to set aside your fear and to find the only thing we have common, which is humanity.
when you find humanity in each person, then you can see them as human…when you see them as human, you realize they are not your enemy
When realize they are not your enemy, you realize that despite your differences you actually have some things in common (you realize you each love your family, and you realize you each love your God, you realize you like the same type of music, or that you both drink coffee at two in the afternoon, you realize you both had a crap childhood, and you have a mutual dislike of Daylight Savings Time).
when you set aside fear, hate subsides… when hate subsides, we are left with what is left
And what is it that we are left with?
We are left with 400 million different types of people, who have different ways of living, but who are all human, and who all live in America.
If you’re reading this, and it resonates with you. It’s ok to be afraid. You are afraid because you are human. It’s okay to want to hold onto everything you know and reject everything unknown, but you can’t stay there. Staying there breeds division. You must set your fear aside, so you can unpack it. Smash your echo chamber and think of the future. The real future, not some made up future where states succeed, or we magically overturn all the laws we don’t like. The real future, the only future we know for sure, that this is the future of our children.
When we reach this place, we can agree that no matter what, we want a better future for our children. We want the younger generations to bond together for unity in diversity. Not trying to make everyone the same, but accepting we are all different and that’s okay.
No matter what you do in your life, you will die. Death comes for every man. You can’t hide from the future, or run from it, but you can face it head on. You can teach your children that fear should not rule them and that seeing people, really seeing them, can make the world a better place.
So put fear aside and open your eyes to all the ways we are ALREADY the same.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks