Is This Who We Are Now?

Maybe we could all try a little harder…

I can’t imagine I’m the only one wondering what our tomorrows will look like.  The world seems on the brink of self-destruction.  The political discourse in our capitals across the country and the world continues to descend into an embrace of greater divisiveness rather than an honest attempt to seek common ground.

We keep telling ourselves someone’s going to step up and step in before we hit the point of no return.  Failing human intervention, surely a merciful God will pull us back from the edge before it’s too late. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think we can rely on God to save us from the consequences of free-falling into the worst versions of ourselves.  History is littered with plenty of evidence to argue the divine will is not going to pull us back from the brink.  Look at what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. Things don’t seem to have gotten much better since, when one considers two World Wars, the holocaust, nuclear weapons, climate change, terrorism, fires, floods, catastrophes.  Rather than count on divine intervention, I think we better come up with a Plan B.

Perhaps, I don’t know, maybe we could return to some level of civil discourse in our society. Maybe we could consider refraining from screaming insults at the top of our lungs in the direction of anyone who disagrees with us. We might attempt to first understand their position, before we decide they’re worthy of canceling, or even go so far as to giving our neighbor, coworker, fellow American, fellow citizen of this beautiful little world, the benefit of the doubt. 

When did this happen?  How did we let things get so out of control?  When did we as a society become so self-involved, so convinced our own opinions are the only ones that matter we drown out everyone else’s voice but our own? When did we become so convinced our individual choices are not only the right way, but the only acceptable way to live?  

Maybe we could all just take a step back, lower our voices, listen, let everyone be heard, seek out a win-win solution, or failing that, consider a compromise everyone can live with.  Isn’t that the way democracy is supposed to work?  Isn’t the Pursuit of Happiness one of the self-evident truths our founding fathers considered vital to our democracy?  Sometimes, someone else’s pursuit of their individual happiness is going to look vastly different than our own, and that’s okay.  In a free country everyone doesn’t have to look the same, act the same, love the same, be the same.

Can’t we just try to get over ourselves and work together on the very real problems confronting us all?

Let’s try something.  Let’s for one day make an effort to listen more than we speak, to lower the temperature in the room, to wave or smile at a stranger we pass on the street, to not honk our horns or make obscene gestures at the inattentive driver in front of us.  Let’s all pause and take a moment to be grateful we live in a free country. And then take a few more moments to acknowledge and be grateful for the men and women who willingly offer their lives to protect our freedoms, and pause once more to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice so we could continue to live them every day.

Let’s try to do better. 

We really need to do better.