A Sense of Perspective

Perspective is a hard thing to keep in the middle of upheaval and change.
Perspective is sometimes a luxury we are not afforded.
This year has definitely reminded me of perspective and how much we need one another. How we have no choice. How it is only together that this world will move forward.
I would like to think that more of us want the best for us than not. That there are more people in this world that do not worship at the altar of hate and who, while selfish, don’t want to see others hurting. I would like to think that the divisions we face can be overcome.

But I just don’t know anymore.

There is so much anger and resentment, things that are part of the human animal by our nature, but my god, they are so deep now. And anger over things that just don’t matter.
Anger over how you are seen, are treated, and are allowed to live and love I will not question. The way that others worship, or don’t. The perception of an imaginary holiday figure. The obsessions we have over small things, to distract us from bigger things we feel we cannot change.

We rage at the notion that people could want change to better themselves and their lives while we seek the same for themselves.

We rage when people are worried and scared after the most offensive election we have ever faced.

We rage at any notion that our viewpoint is wrong.

It is as if all the empathy we prided our nation on having has been drained out and replaced by materialistic nesting as we surround ourselves with toys that we can make loud enough to block the sounds of a changing world we feel we are no longer a part of.

We are replacing joy with fear.

Religious leaders are driving us like cattle towards hate and away from the love that leads most to religion in the first place.

We consolidate industry and kill the workforce in order for the rich to become richer, not seeing that it’s only together that this machine moves forward.

We will always be different. Person to person. Race to race. Sexuality to sexuality. On and on and on and on.

We are all different but deep down, we are all the same.

And we focus so much on the differences and not the sameness.

We have bought into the notion that we need and deserve certain things out of life and if we don’t get those things then someone must
be holding us back. We are never to blame. It’s THEM that has done it to us – taken our jobs, our women, our culture, our happiness.
THEM who has made us suffer.

And there are those who prey on that fear and anger, for their own reasons, happy to play with a fire they believe they can control.
Until the fire gets out of control and people becoming willing to burn it all down, even if it harms themselves, so long as the THEM will pay for what they are believed to have done.

We are so lost.

A flag that once stood for hope and freedom has come to represent fear and rage.
We give more care to how that symbol is treated than we do to those that it represents.
The American Dream has been poisoned by lies we happily believe.

Perspective.
Stepping back.
Take a breath before we rage, we rant, we recoil.
Seeing the world with other eyes, if but for a moment.
There is magic in this world, in the kindness of strangers, in the love of friends, in the support of a family, and in the small things that we so often overlook.
That magic is hope.
Because hope is what remains when all else is lost because if there is one thing in this world that is a constant it is change, and with change there is hope, and with hope anything is possible.
Anything.
And we need all the persepective we can get.
We need all the hope we can handle.
And we need change that will move us forward and not any further back.
The future is frightening because we cannot control it, but we can guide it, and its time for a gentler hand, a kinder eye, and a firmer belief than we are better than the worst of us and that humans deserve better than to kill themselves out of pettiness and greed.
We deserve the future, let’s just hope the future gets a humanity that earns its place there.
…c…