Some days I dread turning on the news. I mean, I turn it on because I feel a need to know what is going on in the world, but the news is generally so ugly, listening and reading leave me feeling heavy hearted on so many days. When did news become synonymous with tragedy and hate? People make jokes about "slow news days," when the reporters talk about inspiring kids starting up lemonade stands, or the president visiting an orphanage. I like those days, because it means that somewhere in the world, someone did something out of hope and out of love, and someone else saw the value in recognizing it. And I guess I wonder if what is reported on CNN is an accurate representation of the world in which we live? If someone hundreds of years from now had only that as an archive of who 21st century human beings were, what would they think of us? We'd be the barbarians, that word we use describe some early civilizations.
So, billions and billions of dollars are spent on research for finding a cure for cancer. For diabetes. For heart disease. We spend untold amounts creating safety standards for roads, airplane travel, group sporting events, school safety. Human natural life expectancies are at an all-time high, despite our culture's absolute obsession with doing self-harm through food, alcohol, drugs. All of this effort, but we squander those few moments we've gained through medical advances by allowing hatred to win? I'm so fucking confused by all of this.
Maybe it's because I'm living in my fifth decade now, and I'm seeing how quickly the time from 23 to 43 has gone. Maybe it's because I see how quickly my children have grown and watched so many of my students move on. Our lives are tiny - no matter what kind of impression we leave - and there comes a point where none of what we are in that very last moment on earth really seems to matter, other than how we are remembered by those who knew us. Why waste it on hatred? Because someone is different? Because they don't think the same way that you do? Because they look different, or act different, or make you think or feel something that maybe you weren't ready to think or feel?
When I was five years old, I moved to a small town in Alabama from a large city on the North East coast. It was like moving onto an alien planet. I had no friends when I first started school, and other kids made fun of the way I talked, since I lacked their deep southern drawl and I spoke bits and pieces of other languages. My first grade teacher despised me, and took every opportunity to paddle me, despite my behavior being no worse than any other first grader's behavior. Mid-year in first grade, because my words didn't sound like everyone else's, I was moved into a special education classroom due to "inability to meet standards for reading." At home I was reading Little Women. In that tiny closet that they called a classroom, I learned for the first time in my life that not everything was fair. That people could abuse power and sometimes there was nothing you could do about it. Special education in that tiny world was made up of me, two deaf students, one black student, and two students who spoke only Spanish. We had no windows, no books other than a dictionary, no games or distractions. For two weeks, I stayed in that room - until my mother met with the school principal - and we did nothing but sit in silence and copy words and math facts from a blackboard. I don't remember the teacher ever smiling, or even talking to us very much. I learned to sign the words for "friend' and "turtle." I learned some Spanish. And then I left, because I had my mother to be an advocate for me, but over the years, I thought about those other students a lot. About how their education had been limited and perhaps a desire to learn completely shut off, because they were different and the educational system saw this as the easiest way to deal with their differences. Still today, I hurt for the way we were treated. Prejudice and hatred can be small, like shoving a child who talks differently face first in the dirt, while a teacher deliberately looks away, or it can be as big as a bomb ripping apart buildings, cities, lives. Neither one makes any sense.
If I thought life in that small town was rough for me, I wonder what it was really like for my older brother, who was a student in the high school and who came out for the first time while living in that small town. It was a town where I saw a cross burned on the lawn of the town's first black family - a family who lived in one of the most expensive homes and was comprised of a father who was a doctor, a mother who was an accountant, and a daughter who was a brilliant musician. Hatred boiled over on this family, for no reason other than they were not only different, but brilliantly and successfully different. They moved away shortly after that. And so, I can't imagine how my brother was treated - I was too young to know the full stories. I know many, many times over the years my parents have feared for his safety, despite their own difficulties with accepting him as-is.
I have friends who are afraid to let others know that they are gay. Or Muslim. Or Jewish. Or Christian. Or atheists. Because they are afraid that they will be targeted with prejudice and hatred. Hatred because they hold a belief. Or because they love someone. They hide a part of themselves in order to live in peace, but there's no peace found in a life where you can't be who and what you are.
Now, despite all the political heat surrounding us in this country, I know that when it comes to safety, we are some of the lucky ones in this world. There are many, many other places I could have been born. Places where I would have had no voice. Places where I could not publicly post the words I am writing without fearing for my life. Places where I would have no right to an opinion because I am a woman. Or because I am part Jewish. Or because I don't hold the right political affiliations.
And at the end of the day, while I can tell you what people say are the motivations and justifications for their violent, hateful actions, I still can't understand. See, I understand biologically the absolute improbability that any of us are here. The odds that one sperm managed to survive the brutal assault that it's under from female anatomy. That one fragile cell managed to divide and thrive and come into the world and then grow to adulthood. The absolute against-all-odds that any of us are standing here - and that someone else thinks that they have the right to come along and take that away dumbfounds me. Because they have an opinion that is different than mine? Or a belief that their concept of spirituality and a greater deity is more right than mine? See, we already have cancer. And car wrecks. And acts of nature. Someone with a gun, they are not an act of nature. They are not unstoppable. Words of ugliness and hatred are a disease, but not one we have to accept. Refuse to listen. Even better, refuse to react. Let the escalation stop here. Let it end.
I have no power over anyone or anything, other than myself. I can be saddened by what I hear on the news, and I can feel anguish for those who are left behind, bewildered and suddenly all too aware of how fragile our lives are and how stupid acts of violence really are. But the only response of which I am capable is to refuse to hate. No matter how much sometimes it hurts to see the child who is treated wrongly by other children, because they are different, or to see a friend turned away from a club because the color of his skin is wrong, or to see lives blown apart on the evening news - I refuse to hate.
Tomorrow, I really hope it's a slow news day. Maybe there's a baby giraffe about to born somewhere and who can't feel love for a baby giraffe? We could use some love.
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