Don’t lose sight of who we are. We are Americans. We fought and died for our freedom. We have been the powerful and relentless underdog. We have protected our families and neighbors and the ideas we believed in most. We took pride in creating a system where voices of the people could be heard.
This is not our first growing pain. We have faced darkness before. We have seen brother against brother. We have seen injustice. Blood has seeped into these soils. But we have prevailed. We have dusted ourselves off, rebuilt, and rediscovered what it means to be an American.
Take pride in who we are. We are the melting pot. We can’t take pride in diversity, yet in the same breath condone those who don’t think like us. It’s a dangerous place when we begin to dehumanize our neighbor and feel justified in their demise.
We are in danger. We must wake up. Politicians, news media, social media, big tech, have us at their mercy as sleeping men. They plant the seeds and we do the leg work. Think about the information you’re working off of. What information do you think others are working off of? If you were being fed the same information diet, would your actions be so different?
The human race is capable of both the horrific and the glorious. None of us are immune to the temptations of evil or its disguise as righteousness. But before you allow the dark veil of hate to be the lens through which you observe the world, be critical. Are you and I that different? Given different circumstances, could we find ourselves in roles reversed? What could make that happen? Our minds are malleable. It takes great time, effort, and restraint to think for ourselves. It takes even more to love your neighbor at their least lovable moments.
But we must. Hate will not deliver us from evil. Even carefully directed hate. Even righteous hate. Is still hate.
It deeply saddens me to see the behaviors of grown adults I had the greatest respect for struggle in finding a place of understanding for their fellow man. I watch them add to the frenzy, spread and promote evil, all the while feeling justified and proud as others in the darkness extend a hand to pat them on the back. What they can’t see is that hand is ugly. That hand is quick to judge, quick to react, and quick to allow them to fall without remorse, when they’ve inevitably fulfilled the duty that hand had laid upon them.
Only love can break the chains we have been binding. Rather than jump to judge, work to understand. It is only from a place of an open heart that we have the opportunity to save ourselves. America needs saving. Be the one to throw the life preserver, rather than rejoice in the loss of opposition as your perceived enemy drowns, for only moments prior, you yourself were losing footing.
God help us.
Stay safe. Stay sane. Don’t lose sight of who we are.