What if? What if this all wouldn’t have happened? What if that wouldn’t have happened? What if I said what I really felt? What if I didn’t care (HIGHLY UNLIKELY, but what if)? What if I stopped pretending? What if I didn’t think about what people saw, and lived the way that burns inside of me? What if there were no checklists and comparative notes? What if we acted and reacted from a place of good will and intention, and not driven by commerce? What if the collective we celebrated and loved from a place of peace? What if we checked our hearts before we moved our mouths? What if we tried on different shoes, and then walked that mile before we judged another. What if we read the same things and came to different conclusions? What if I’m wrong and you’re right? What if the opposite were true? What if what is good for you isn’t good for me? For decades, heck centuries, we have been trying to get the world to believe that we, the proverbial we, belonged outside of the box, and then we allowed the world to put us right back into it.
Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies. John Dryden
I can’t tell you how many times in the last few years that I have been horrified not by the happenings in and of the world (I expect it), but of the behaviors and vitriol that were born out of, or manifested from said happenings. Any day, at any given time, and in what seems every single situation that arises, the woodwork seemingly opens up and voices are crawling out of it begging to be heard and apparently wanting to be on the scene. Some of my most favorite kind, loving and gentle voices became polarizing, rude and narrow minded. Disturbingly, opinions have become gospel and the gospel has become opinion. You can pick a different bandwagon every other day if you want to, and nobody seems to notice the hypocrisy at all. The human brain has become a sponge that soaks up manipulation and propaganda, from ALL sides, and turns it into truth and fact. It has been incredibly hard not to jump down that rabbit hole. Embarrassingly, there are not many among us that have not dabbled their foot in the hole more times than we’d probably like to count. What happened to celebrating differences or at the very least hearing perspectives? Is individual thought not a thing any more? Respect goes all ways, in all directions, and not just the way you or I want it to go. How did we so quickly forget that? This just in but not one person on earth thinks EXACTLY like you do, and last time that I checked that was not only a good thing but individualism, we have been told and most of us have believed, is something to be revered. I’m concerned that by current world standards this last statement is only true if individual expectations of their own narratives, or worldview perspectives, are met. The problem, in my view, with this is that the whole idea of human individualism is therefore intellectually and morally dishonest if evaluated by those criteria.
Friends and families have been ostracized, for expressing themselves, if it didn’t fit certain narratives. In all directions of recent topics this has been true. I’ve witnessed conversations and read countless posts of people who didn’t care, tragically, if someone actually died, ACTUALLY DIED, because they didn’t or did do those gospeled opinions that everyone has tried to standardize. In some of these exchanges human beings, with supposed hearts, actually willed people with differing thoughts to leave this earth. I challenge you to quietly think about that for a moment. No words for such inhumane character. I don’t know about you but in my heart if I’m giving the MOST GRACE that I’m capable of, those thoughts are delusionally misguided, indefensible and ignorant. The word evil comes to mind too. I do not know one person here on earth that KNOWS what the hell is going on. Do you? I mean truly, DO YOU REALLY? Even on a day when you think that you do, some other version of a clown show pops up and all theories are blown to bits. We have all been bamboozled from so many directions. I believe that our world's people are intellectually and emotionally better than how we have behaved and what we have allowed to happen to EACH OF US.
So I ask you this…what if we practiced what we preached? What if we loved, as a verb, and didn't just give it lip service. What if we actually tried to look at differing perspectives through the lens of others, instead of our own narrowmindedness. Ask any detective, no two people witness the same situation and have the exact same account. What if we respected and celebrated instead of criticized and demoralized? What if we worked on bettering ourselves through our behaviors and attitudes instead of projecting onto others. What if we tried to put on those shoes and walked that mile? What if, weird, we minded our own business? What if we thought before we spoke? What if we researched before we regurgitated? What if we ripped open the box for someone else, extended our hand and helped them step outside of it, regardless if they didn’t believe like we do or not? What if we actually listened and tried to understand instead of interjecting? What if we stopped talking about other people’s personal decisions and got back to civilized conduct. What if THAT’S HOW to change this world??????????